‘They believed it’: Hagerstown softball seniors pave the way for the program’s future

LIBERTY, Ind. — All season long, Hagerstown head softball coach Bruce Charles asked the question, “Why not us?” when it came to who was going to beat Union County.

After the Tigers had a good showing at the Richmond Invitational in mid-April, his players believed they could compete with the Patriots. After the Tigers won the Wayne County Tournament the following week, they believed they were the second-best team in the Tri-Eastern Conference.

The best team was never in question. Union County went undefeated in TEC play while holding opponents to a total of just four runs, 29 fewer than any other team.

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Charles knew Hagerstown’s season would come down to Union County, and by the time his Tigers met the Patriots in Tuesday’s sectional semifinal, they believed they could win.

“We’ve been talking all week about belief and the energy staying up,” Charles said. “I think the girls believed it, and they came to play. That’s what I’m more proud of than anything is they believed it for a long time and didn’t give up.”

After the first inning, some others started to believe it, too.

Hagerstown senior Tori Kelley was the first batter of the game. She was squaring off with Union County’s ace pitcher, junior Chloe Greene, who pitched more innings than anyone else in the TEC and was the only TEC player with an ERA below 1.00.

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Kelley didn’t care, and she drove a ball to the right-field fence for a leadoff double. Fellow senior Hayley Harris moved her into scoring position with a sacrifice bunt. A strikeout brought freshman Rylan Young to the plate with two outs. In a two-strike count, Young popped a ball just over Greene’s head, and it landed, untouched, right behind her in no man’s land. Young was safe at first with no throw, and Kelley scored from second base.

The Tigers had the lead, and the dugout — joined by the entire Hagerstown fanbase on the third-base side of the diamond — erupted.

Sophomore Hannah Pyle started in the pitching circle in the bottom half of the inning. The nerves were evident, as she walked the first two batters. That brought Union County senior Sophia Knock to the plate. Knock was one of two TEC players — along with sophomore teammate AnnaLea Adams — with a batting average above .600 this season.

Pyle didn’t care, and she set down Knock and the next two batters to escape the inning with no damage.

The Tigers still had the lead, and, once again, everyone in purple and yellow erupted.

“I was pretty locked in tonight. Everybody was,” Kelley said. “We knew that if we wanted to beat them, we had to do more than we have in every game we’ve played … We knew we had to have the energy, and we did have that at the beginning of the game.”

That’s when Union County did what Union County does. The Patriots scored two runs in the second inning, one in the third, three in the fourth and another three in the seventh. Greene didn’t allow any more runs the rest of the way, striking out 12 in the process.

The Patriots went on to win 9-1, bringing Hagerstown’s final record to 12-11, its first winning season since 2015.

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Charles said the team’s success this year is largely due to his three seniors — Kelley, Harris and Marissa Slagle — and their leadership. The Tigers’ starting lineup all season consisted of those three, Pyle and five freshmen. Playing freely, instilling confidence in the younger players and building a winning culture were all things Charles mentioned as he described what the seniors have meant to the program.

“It hasn’t been a big winning tradition here for a while, and I think we finally got on the right side of it,” Charles said. “These freshman — I think their confidence is going to be better, and they’re going to be leaders as sophomores going into next season. I think they could turn the program around. I really do, and it started this year with the senior leadership.”

Another thing Charles has said all year is his freshmen don’t play like freshmen; they play like experienced ballplayers, and that’s also largely thanks to his seniors.

The freshmen had their own way of thanking the seniors, and it involved doing what they had all season. A staple of the 2022 Hagerstown Tigers is bringing the energy. After every pitch, on offense or defense, you’ll hear them from all around the ballpark. While it wasn’t a win, freshman Allison Stinson said they wanted to make the seniors’ last game a fun one.

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“They’ve left a big impact on all of us, from them picking us up when we make a mistake and cheering us on to showing us how to be a leader and not to take time for granted,” Stinson said.

Charles said there’s a group of seventh-graders in the Hagerstown system that looks similar to his current freshmen group, and he can’t wait to combine the two in a couple of years. It has him and his seniors looking forward to what’s ahead for the Tigers.

“I want them to become leaders,” Kelley said of the current freshmen. “I want them to be able to look up to us three and say we were leaders to them, and I want them to be leaders like we were … I think they’re going to win a sectional championship.”

Zach Piatt reports on sports and education for The Palladium-Item. Contact him at zpiatt@gannett.com or on Twitter @zachpiatt13.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Hagerstown softball seniors pave the way for the program’s future