Championship bound: Lexington Catholic knocks off McCracken County in softball semifinals
Facing the biggest game of their lives for a program that had only been to the state tournament once before in its history, Lexington Catholic Coach Emery Emmert didn’t know how his players would react.
“They seemed very relaxed, so I was a little nervous. ‘OK, are they too relaxed? Are they focused?’ I don’t know,” Emmert said of his Knights. “But then we get out there and just start rolling. ‘OK, we’re hittin’. This is good.”
Lexington Catholic got some clutch hits, capitalized on a few critical McCracken County errors and made enough defensive plays behind heralded freshman pitcher Abby Hammond to defeat the Mustangs 6-1 in the state semifinals Saturday. The Knights advanced to Sunday afternoon’s championship game of the Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Softball State Tournament presented by UK HealthCare.
Hammond, who on Thursday was named Kentucky Gatorade Player of the Year, backed up that honor again this weekend with a gritty performance against the most potent offense in the state this year.
“She was unbelievable,” Emmert said. “That’s why she’s Gatorade Player of the Year. She comes out and does that. She was mixing speeds well, hitting spots, wasting pitches when she needed to. It was beautiful.”
Hammond struck out just two, scattered five hits and pitched through four errors to allow only one run — a score that came in a desperate seventh-inning rally for McCracken that was shut down when Hammond’s glove snagged a sharp liner up the middle, giving her the chance to double off a runner at third base to end the game.
“I don’t even think I saw it. I think I just stuck my glove up,” Hammond said.
Hammond played a large role in the LexCath offense as well, scoring the game’s first run on a double by Emily Lammers after a leadoff walk in the first inning. She then drew a wild pitch ball four on a 3-2 count in the second inning that let Sara Prisinzano score from third. Prisinzano and Lydia Kennedy hit singles ahead of Hammond while Caitlyn Kelley reached on a fielder’s choice. Kelley scored on Lucy Nash’s two-out single to stake LexCath to a 3-0 lead after two innings.
Rated the No. 3 team in the state at the end of the regular season, McCracken County (34-3) topped the state rankings in home runs (62), average (.453) and RBI (361) in 2022. And McCracken had runners on in the second, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh innings.
But Hammond’s defense made enough plays around the errors to keep the Mustangs’ scoreless through six innings.
“Well, they make it fun,” Emmert said smiling, joking about the defensive mistakes. “If they just made every play, it would be just like (shrugs) ‘OK.’ But they always come through … They come through when the big moments happen.”
With two on and no one out in the fourth inning after a single and an error, Ava Emmert fielded a grounder to third, stepped on her bag and threw out the Mustang batter at first for a critical double play. Hammond got the next hitter to ground out weakly to first base.
“That was an incredible play by Ava at third because that kind of flipped the energy back on our side,” Hammond said. “I felt that flipped the script there.”
LexCath padded its lead to 5-0 in the fifth inning as a McCracken error and a walk put two runners on with no outs. Another error allowed Ava Emmert to score on a grounder through the third baseman’s legs. A hit batsmen loaded the bases for Kelley, who delivered an RBI single scoring Prisinzano, although Kennedy was thrown out at home on the same play.
Kinley Willoughby made it 6-0 Lexington Catholic in the bottom of the sixth with an RBI single scoring pinch-runner Camden Perry after a one-out walk to Ava Emmert.
Since Lexington Catholic’s dramatic 2-1 win over Boyle County in the first round last week, when Coach Emmert told his team to “fight like the third kangaroo trying to get on Noah’s Ark,” kangaroos have been making regular appearances in the dugout and in the stands.
“The kangaroo thing is getting crazy,” Coach Emmert said. “I actually say the K at the front of Knight, the silent K is for kangaroo.”
Hammond noted that the team has been buying various forms of kangaroos on Amazon this week and got a fresh mask that made an appearance after Saturday’s game. She said she’d be OK renaming the team mascot “The Kangaroos.”
“I don’t know that the school would be OK with that, but I would be open to it,” Hammond said, laughing.
Regardless, the No. 10 Knights (30-6) have hopped into Sunday’s state championship game. LexCath has been to the state tournament only one other time, a 1997 trip that resulted in two losses back when the event was a double-elimination format.
It’s a dream Coach Emmert said he talked with his players about even when he was a middle school coach some years ago for many of these same players.
“We did talk about it when we were younger,” Hammond confirmed. “We have a wall of champions at Lexington Catholic and softball is kind of empty there, so we used to talk about it. It’s really exciting. We’re hoping to make history tomorrow.”
This story was originally published June 11, 2022 at 4:18 PM.
