” 3 the Hard Way!!!”
When Kaci Goedde threw the final pitch of the 2017 5th Region Softball Tournament, you could say that the Central Hardin Lady Bruins were 3-Peat Champions! But it wasn’t quite as easy as everyone might think. In order to get that final win, the Lady Bruins had one blowout, one one-run game and one game that was tied up until the fifth inning. It was far from easy, but you could say that head coach Jaime Goodman’s team earned it. When Central Hardin finished off Marion County to win a 4-1 game, they became the first team in the 5th Region to win three straight titles and they did it with hitting, pitching and timely defense in a Region Tournament that had a little bit of everything.
The Three P’s! Power, Patience and Pitching! Any team which wants to have a chance to beat Central Hardin will have to play a perfect game, because they can beat you so many different ways and went from a team like the New York Yankees that only win when balls leave the park to one that can beat you with speed, base running and being opportunistic. After bombing Taylor County in game one, the Lady Bruins took advantage of two errors caused by speed on the bases against Green County to erase a 2-0 deficit and pull out a 3-2 win. Against Marion County, the Lady Bruins overcame an early 1-0 lead to come back thanks to Goedde’s steady pitching and a big two-run shot by Emily Bryant to build a 4-1 lead they never relinquished. The win gave Goodman his 300th career win after taking over for former coach Mark Martin in 2011.
The NEXT Queen of K!!!! She may only be a freshman, but Haley Mattingly may be the next best pitcher to come out of the 5th Region. The Marion County hurler has been under the radar since her seventh-grade year after taking over for former starter Ashley Walls and this season as quietly helped the Lady Knights to 20 wins and a deep run in the Region Tourney. It was in the 5th Region Tournament that she has really shined with 15-K’s against North Hardin, 10 against Hart County and had 8 against the powerful Lady Bruins.
The Showdown that NEVER happened! Given the possibility that Green County and Hart County advanced to the final game, it would have set up a dream matchup between two teams which are not only District Rivals, but had quite a history recently. Unfortunately Central Hardin and Marion County had something to say about that. Green County blew a two run lead thanks to part to errors and a couple of strange plays involving the pride of the Lady Dragons their defense. Alex Keltner, who pitched in trouble most of the game did a creditable job despite never retiring the side in order in any inning in a 3-2 loss. Meanwhile, Hart County tried to erase the bad memory of last year’s nightmare and nearly did with Katie Collins and Haley Mattingly trading haymakers all night long, but in a scoreless game in the sixth, a wicked hop hit by catcher Kelly Overstreet allowed the only run of the game to cross the plate in another painful one-run loss.
DEFENSE WINS, BABY!!!!! That saying was never more true than by looking at the scores of the first round of the Tournament in which the first two games were major blowouts and the next two were 5-0 shutouts. The following day, the semi-finals saw a totally different story in which pitching and defense erased several scoring chances in both games and the result was 3-2 and 1-0 games in which 12 of the 14 innings were scoreless.
REPEATING IS HARD TO DO! Although Central Hardin has had no problem getting back to the Final Game of the 5th Region Tourney, Washington County became the latest to find out how hard it is to make it back to the Championship game when it was beaten by Green County 19-0 in the first game. In fact, other than Central Hardin’s repeat performance the last five years, the last time a team was able to appear in the Final in multiple consecutive seasons was North Hardin in 2007-2008-2009.
PRESSURE PERFORMER!!!!! Sophomore Kaci Goedde is use to being the closer in the big game. In her eighth grade year, she got the win when Central Hardin beat Taylor County for the Region Championship in 2015. Last season, Goedde was the starter in the team’s title defense against Washington County and last Wednesday she went the distance against Marion County to pick up the win.
