RISING SUN — A pitchers’ duel ensued between Jac-Cen- Del’s Morgen Carroll and Hauser’s Tessa Sims on Monday night, and both teams had trouble mustering even a single hit.
A wild pitch ended up making the difference.
Hunter Crain led off the bottom of the seventh with a double and a sacrifice bunt moved her to third. When Carroll threw the ball the low and all the way to the backstop, Crain raced home to send the Jets home happy with a 2-1 victory in the opening round of the Rising Sun Sectional.
“I knew going out there that I had a job that needed to get done,” Crain said.
Class A No. 3 Hauser (22-3) moves on to face South Decatur, which stunned Rising Sun 14-0 in the other opening-round game, in the semifinals at 6 p.m. today.
The Jets led 1-0 going into the top of the seventh, but a couple of errors allowed the Eagles (10-10) to tie the game.
Carroll finished with 11 strikeouts, and Sims recorded 16 strikeouts. Sims, who had pitched only three innings in the past month because of a shoulder injury, admitted that she did feel a little fatigued at about the fourth inning. Knowing the flow of the game so far and along with Carroll’s great pitching, Sims made her decision to stay in the circle to finish the game.
“Knowing it could be our final game and with how great Morgen was pitching, I had to finish it out,” Sims said.
With a lot of girls playing in their first full sectional game, Sims added that she was glad that the team stayed together, especially when many teams would have had a mental lapse after giving up the tying run.
“We knew going into the seventh that (Jac-Cen-Del) was going to be aggressive,” Sims said. “They were going to look for a run some how, someway. My dad (coach Craig Sims) told us that we know the strike zone by now, and we know what (Carroll) is going to pitch to us. We made great adjustments and Hunter came up with a big hit.”
Hauser had only two hits in the game. The first was a triple by Ali Hoover in the third.
The Jets’ first run came in the fifth when Shelby Fugate was hit by pitch and later scored on an Eagles error trying to throw her out at third.
