Our Super Tuesday of softball and baseball

Part of the job as a sports editor is being part showman, whether YOU think the ideas that involve the job are goofy or not.

My late boss Andy was keyed up for this day 17 years ago here in Putnam County. It was as if EVERYTHING important in the county was happening on this Tuesday afternoon and night. And looking back, I now understand the hype since we never have lived up to this particular day again.

On the docket for Tuesday, April 24, 2007: State tournament softball games for both Palatka and Interlachen. District tournament baseball games for Palatka and Interlacchen where, with wins, the teams would qualify for the state tournament.

Then there was the case of the St. Johns River Community (now State) College softball team, coached by Toni Willis, a former Vikings player under Toni Thompson. Never in the program's fastpitch history had the Vikings made it to the state tournament. And with a win in a neutral-site game at Santa Fe College in Gainesville against Lake City Community College this afternoon, the Vikings were going to play in the state tournament as a fifth-place team in the challenging Mid-Florida Conference.

So my day started at 1:30 p.m. with a trip up State Road-100 from my home and onto SR-26 and then SR-222 into Gainesville and a straight shoot right to Santa Fe. It was a beautiful afternoon for the Vikings and Timberwolves to play this tie-breaking matchup.

Willis' plan was to start Keystone Heights High graduate Marian McCall in the circle and eventually switch to Williston High product Roxzanne Rawls. But it wasn't going to be easy since the Vikings had lost three of four in the regular season to the Timberwolves.

Upstairs in the press box overlooking the field, I sat for most of the game next to Santa Fe's coach at the time, Chris Ahern. The game was scoreless going into the fourth with the Vikings hitting. Rachel Torres, who was the Vikings' top hitter all season, led off with a bloop hit that she hustled into a double. Stefanie Hunt sacrifice buted her to third, bringing up Chelsi Garner.

"They need to get this run now," Ahern would tell me. "They can't let this situation go. They've done a nice job of holding (Lake City) down."

She was right -- this was "the" opportunity for the Vikings. And Garner delivered with a single to left field to make it 1-0.

But McCall, fighting stomach issues all week, ran into big-time trouble in the fifth. I'd seen this script before and all good things normally came to an end in a bad way for the Vikings. Opposing pitcher Shelly Law singled for Lake City's first hit of the game. Stacey Bardroff walked and both moved up a base on a sacrifice.

Stephanie Schellhorn tried to squeeze bunt Law home, but McCall got to the ball quickly and tossed to catcher Torres, who made the tag on Law for the out. But it wasn't over yet: Kayla Hamalainen walked to load the bases and the next hitter, Jane Gordon, was at 2-0 in the count when Torres went out to talk to McCall. After the game, I asked her what Torres told her.

"Less thinking, more throwing," she said.

On the next pitch, Gordon flied out to end the threat.

The Vikings added to their miniscule lead when Katie Shannon -- affectionately known as "Tater" on the team -- blooped a single to left field on a 3-2 pitch from Law to score Kim Turvey and Palatka High product Megan Harris to make it 3-0.

Lake City put a runner on base against Rawls in the seventh with one out, but Schellhorn hit a hot smash liner right at third baseman Hunt, who snagged it, then fired across the diamond to first baseman Garner to complete the double play and send the Vikings into celebration mode.

For the first time, the Vikings were state-tournament bound! Willis, who like Harris played her high school ball at Palatka High, realized a dream she had since taking the program over in 2003: "When I took this program over, I wanted to make it a program in which we would go to the state tournament every year. It's a dream come true."

I got out of there and found a local coffee shop down the road with Wifi for which I can type my story and boxscore in. That was 5 p.m. Thirty minutes later, the story was done and I was having dinner with a dear online friend named Lisa who didn't live far from where I was in Gainesville. We had Chinese food and after saying our goodbyes, I was off to Interlachen for the Rams' state tournament game at home with Mount Dora.

The problem is there was no "direct" route to get to Interlachen High. You can't go in a straight line with so many bodies of water in the way. So I had to go back the way I came and it took about 45 minutes to do so.

It was 7:15 and the game started at 7. I had quite a bit of catching up in recording Interlachen's first state tournament game since 1999. I can't tell you how helpful coach Ron Whitehurst was that day.

The Rams were 20-3 and coming off a district championship the week before at Pierson Taylor. The Rams had a dynamite lineup that included Whitehurst's daughter, Brittani, Jessica Byrd, Kim Traxler and Sam Loder, just to name a few.

But Mount Dora had a young lady in the circle named Ce Ce Dail. And she was wild ... but wildly effective. As Whitehurst told me after the game, "She was wild within the strike zone. We got our first two runs via third-strike drops."

Dail's performance was far from a thing of beauty -- she threw 150 pitches in going the distance with eight walks, but 12 strikeouts.

Two run-scoring singles -- Dail's one-run single and Natalie Hodges' two-run safety -- against starter Katy Jordan gave Mount Dora a 3-0 lead in the first inning.

True to form, Dail got in trouble in the bottom of the first inning on walks to Courtney Lewis and Traxler and a single by Byrd. But Dail struck out Whitehurst and Loder and got Seana Crane on a comebacker.

As coach Whitehurst mentioned before, the Rams got their two runs on dropped third strikes that scored Caitlin Hagan and courtesy runner Lindsay Kurtz. And Interlachen went for more: With Byrd on third and two outs, Traxler walked ... and just kept going. The Rams were trying to catch the Hurricanes off guard.

It didn't work. Dail was not fooled in the circle. She simply threw the ball to second to nail Traxler and end the inning.

"I don't believe I just saw that" was my reaction as I momentarily put my hands over my face.

Afterward, I asked Whitehurst what got into him to try that play. He said, "We've beaten people with our legs this year. We're not changing the way we play. It was worth taking a shot."

And it was -- you don't get to 20-3 with smoke and mirrors. Plus Whitehurst was looking at Dail, this wild card in the circle, and looking to be aggressive since you didn't know what to expect from her.

Hodge, who was 4-fof-4 with four RBIs, singled in a run in the third to make it 4-2. Then an error by the Rams in the fifth on a play at third base allowed another run to score to make it 5-2.

But Interlachen made it interesting. The Rams loaded the bases in the bottom of the fourth down 4-2, but Traxler hit a comebacker to end the inning. They made it interesting in the sixth when Byrd boomed a triple to the left-center field gap to score Christina Andrews and Byrd to make it a one-run game.

They had Traxler at the plate in a big moment with one out. You can feel the momentum turn in Interlachen's favor and just like almost every game that season, the Rams would find a way to win. Traxler could not hit a ball any harder than she did.

It was directly at shortstop Jordan Bixler for the second out. Then after striking out Brittani Whitehurst twice already, Dail struck her out a third time to end the threat.

Hodge's fourth hit scored Dail in the seventh to give the Hurricanes a 6-4 lead, then Dail shut the door on the Rams in the seventh. Dail owned the middle of the Rams' lineup as Whitehurst, Loder and Crane -- batters four through six in the lineup -- were a combined 0-for-11 with a walk and nine strikeouts.

And it was over -- *I* went 1-1 for the day in covering our local teams. Interlachen would repeat as district champion the next season, the last district title for the program since.

I got back to the office and Andy got there the same time. He had covered BOTH the Palatka softball and baseball games in town that night. (Here's the thing: Palatka softball, for which he went to, won in a quickie over Crystal River, 3-0, in the state tournament, then he left from the high school to head to the famed Azalea Bowl to cover the "other" Palatka game, Palatka's 8-0 win over Menendez in the District 5-4A semifinals that automatically qualified the Panthers for the state tournament. I wouldn't have put a byline on that story since I got there later, but them's not my rules.")

I wrote my Interlachen story after he had gotten my SJRCC softball game story via email earlier in the day. While I finished up my second story and began working on the scoreboard page, I also had to call Jeff Finch, Interlachen's head baseball coach. The Rams were in Keystone Heights to face Union County in the District 6-3A semifinals and if the Rams had won, they were going to the state tournament for the second year in a row.

It wasn't to be as the Rams lost, 7-2.

By the time Andy got his two stories done and he had all my work, he was able to lay out the front page ... and he made a special look with the five games we had all starting on the front and jumping inside to page 3B.

Oh, the joys of a 1 a.m. deadline back in the day. How I miss thee.

To review: PHS baseball and softball won, IHS baseball and softball lost and SJR State softball won and was heading to the state tournament for the first time in fastpitch program history.

What a day. By the time the paper began to print, there was a sigh of relief, then a moment of silence that, yes ... we had just had a special day in Putnam County that rarely comes along.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 WAS a special day. So many postseason dreams were seen or died that day.

I learned to cherish them ... they only come so few or often. Goofy or not.