Late rally not enough for Hodag softball in regionalsBy Jeremy Mayo river news sports editor The Rhinelander High School softball rallied in the final innings Thursday at Waupaca but didn’t have enoug

The Rhinelander High School softball rallied in the final innings Thursday at Waupaca but didn’t have enough offense to overcome a fast start by the Comets in a 4-2 loss in the WIAA playoff opener.

Trailing 4-0 heading to the sixth, Rhinelander scratched across a run in each of the final two innings, but ran out of time as its season came to an end. 

Waupaca scored a run right away in the first, added three more runs in the fifth and outhit the Hodags 8-2 in the contest. 

“The difference in the game tonight what they hit and we didn’t,” Hodag coach Ali Bender said. “We didn’t have strikeouts, but we had little bloopers, very soft hits back to like shortstop, second base. We didn’t have a lot of hard hits.”

Hailey Bechard went 2-for-2 for the Comets, including a triple in the bottom of the first that turned into an inside the park round-tripper following a throwing error. That was Rhinelander’s only blemish defensively until the fifth inning when, after a pair of singles, the Hodags opted to intentionally walk Bechard to load the bases with one away. Lily Cichy and Amelia Koran followed with back-to-back singles that gave the Comets a four-run lead. 

Rhinelander got a run back in the top of the sixth as Chase Verbist walked, moved to second on an Aleece Johnson sacrifice and scored on a grounder by Lucy Lindner. Nevaeh Anderson hit an RBI triple in the seventh to score Kayln Miller and bring the tying run to the plate, but Cassidy Lindner flew out to right to end the game.

“We had more girls on base in the seventh inning unfortunately, it’s just it didn’t go away tonight,” Bender said. “If Cass’s ball gets down, we had to call not go our away for a walk. There were two there could have been two girls on that ball game could’ve been 3-4 with you know only one out versus two, which makes a huge difference.”

The call Bender referred to was a 3-0 pitch to leadoff hitter Kadyn Taylor that was called strike one. Taylor flew out to left on the next pitch she faced. 

Johnson pitched all seven innings for Rhinelander, taking the loss. She gave up four runs on eight hits with a walk and six strikeouts. The defense made only one error behind her — on the leadoff triple by Bechard in the first. 

“She did a fantastic job. Our defense did a great job,” Bender said. “You take away some of those extra bases, you take away that home run, we’re right that ball game again.”

The Hodags ended their season with a 5-16 record. Bender called that a step in the right direction following last year’s 1-16 campaign — especially considering the adversity the team faced all season. 

“We had so many different curveballs thrown at us as far as the dome collapsing, crazy schedule with all the weather we’ve had. We did get a lot of home games. We also had battle adversity of people quitting, and just coming together as a team and having such a young team with only one senior, I’m just super proud of them,” she said. “We have now changed our culture. We had fun this year. It wasn’t hard to come to practice. it wasn’t hard to come to games. We cheered each other on. We encouraged each other. There are things that we need to work on as a program, but overall, just the culture this year and our attitudes have changed a lot.”

The Hodags finished the season with only one senior on the roster — Lucy Lindner. Given the number of freshmen who started and played for the team this season, Bender said there’s a lot of potential with the squad, depending on how much time it devotes to the game in the offseason. 

“If we want to start competing and we want to win more games, we have to put in the effort to offseason,” she said. “Not just OK now season ended today, which is May 22, and I’m not going to pick up a ball until March 16 of next year when season starts again. That’s what kind of our program has been. We lack that you know that hard intense commitment, and so we talked about ways that we can you know be committed this summer.” 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].