By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
It wouldn't be the postseason without a little drama. Twice Tuesday evening at the Sports Complex, the Lady Panther softball team finished out tough games to punch their ticket to state for the first time since 2015. Freshman Camdyn Post provided the walk-off hit in a 4-3 regional semifinal win against Newton. Freshman Kya Behr hit her second 3-run homer in the regional championship to help Great Bend defeat Goddard 5-3.
"It's super exciting," said Lady Panther Coach Carrie Minton. "That's what we've talked about for a long time is how far these girls have come. Our seniors, over the years, we struggled early on. They have continued to work hard and stuck with it. Last year we finished .500. This year, it's amazing they've maintained and continued to work hard and set a great example. Then you have these classes coming in below them that are extremely talented. They just surrounded themselves and created their set of expectations. The expectation is to win."
Great Bend trailed 2-0 into the bottom of the third inning against Goddard. Behr, already with a 3-run home run in the third inning against Newton, again stepped to the plate in the bottom of the third against Goddard after Halle Post reached on an error and Paige Thexton singled. Behr's home run to center field gave the Lady Panthers their first lead in the championship game at 3-2.
"I was just working to get on base," she said. "Batting average, I think, is not as important as RBIs, so I'll 100-percent sacrifice my batting average to get those girls in because it's all about the runs."
Freshman Chayla Prendergast walked to lead off the fourth inning. Denver Ringo followed with a single, then Alyssa McCauley put down a bunt and reached on an error that scored Rylee Prilling, running for Prendergast. The Great Bend lead grew to 4-2.
Behr hit a one-out double in the fifth inning and scored on a single to center field from DeShawnna Bryant for the final Lady Panther run of the evening.
Prendergast was effective in the circle all night. She allowed two earned runs on four hits in seven innings of work in the championship game. She struck out three and walked seven. She forced a groundout in the sixth inning to leave a runner stranded at third, and she worked around three-straight walks to allow just one run in the seventh. The go-ahead run was at the plate when a hard-hit ball to Bryant in right ended Goddard's season.
Behr finished with the home run and double to drive in three runs and score twice. Thexton singled twice and scored a run. Bryant had the single and an RBI.
If the regional championship came to a dramatic conclusion, even it failed to meet the excitement of the semifinal game against Newton. Again trailing 2-0 into the bottom of the third, Behr's first bomb of the game put Great Bend ahead 3-2.
Newton tied things up in the top of the sixth. The drama continued into the top of the seventh. Sophomore Braelyn Turner threw the first 6.2 innings, allowing three earned runs on six hits with four strikeouts and a pair of walks. With a runner in scoring position, Minton made the move to Prendergast with a 1-1 count and two outs in the book. The freshman recorded a strikeout to leave the go-ahead run stranded at third.
"Instead of letting their batter feel comfortable and put pressure on our defense, we wanted the batter to feel the pressure of having to see somebody new already being down in the count," said Minton. "That was the thinking behind it. It wasn't anything other than changing up what they were seeing in that moment and making them think a little bit."
Katherine Mazouch hit a one-out single in the bottom of the seventh but was thrown out at second on a fielder's choice off the bat of Thexton. Camdyn Post, with two outs and the game-winning run on first base, delivered a ball to center field that allowed Thexton to score in walk-off fashion.
"I had a lot of confidence in them," Minton said. "I knew we were struggling at the plate just a little bit. We were getting underneath everything. It basically boiled down to we were putting too much pressure on ourselves to try and come up with a big hit. I felt like we had settled down a little bit and I was confident."
Post was huge at the plate in her first varsity postseason game with three hits, including the game-winning double, three RBIs, and a run scored. Behr homered and walked, and Kamdyn Koelsch added a pair of singles.
Great Bend takes a 22-6 record into next Thursday's Class 5A State Softball Championships in Wichita.