Softball: Indian Hills walks it off again, advances to 2nd straight state final in 11-inning thriller

Shortly after Indian Hills’ Karley Jo Greulich punched the Braves’ ticket back to Toms River for the Group 3 state final on Tuesday with a game-winning, walkoff RBI single through the left-center gap, fellow Ace Darren Cooper texted me…

“I mean, do they have to play every single game like this?? It’s amazing.”

Amazing might even be an understatement, but really, we’re running out of adjectives to describe this storybook season for the Braves. As pitcher Devin Durando said after the game with a laugh… “It’s not Indian Hills softball unless we make things interesting.”

After Indian Hills’ thrilling 3-2 11-inning marathon win over North 2, Group 3 champion Warren Hills (24-5) — which featured an 81-minute rain delay midway through the fourth inning — the Braves are now one win away from, at the very least, joining the discussion regarding best teams in state history.

I mean, they beat previously-undefeated IHA in the Bergen County final in a year when most believed this was the best-assembled Blue Eagles team in years (and could very well be Non-Public A champions in a few days) and they are on the verge of becoming the first team in New Jersey history to go 34-0… in a season when you could argue Indian Hills played in the toughest division in North Jersey (Big North Freedom — with Ridgewood, Northern Highlands, Paramus, Ramapo, Hackensack), was grouped in the toughest of the four sections in the BCT, went through an always-challenging North 1, Group 3 section and, most recently, beat a Warren Hills sophomore pitcher — Madey Smith — who has already verbally committed to Penn State (and is going to keep Warren Hills a state title contender for the next two years). One person told me Smith may be the fourth best pitcher in the state, behind — in no particular order — Durando, Ally Frei and Steph Thomas. They also have a win this season against High Point (who may be the Group 2 champions in a few days) and Frei – the Boston College-bound senior who recently became New Jersey’s all-time strikeouts leader. So, they aren’t just undefeated… they are undefeated while playing a relentless and unforgiving schedule.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Indian Hills coach Joe Leicht said. “And I’ve said it before, but we’ve played so many tournament games over the years… what is it, probably about 30 of them in the last three, and most of the girls here now have been involved in all of them. To us, every game feels like a tournament game. This one was the first to go this long, but that experience is so key. We’ve been in these situations so many times before.”

No matter the opponent, no matter the pitcher, no matter the circumstances, no matter the deficit they face, Indian Hills just keeps winning — now 35 straight and 61 of its last 62 games, dating back to last season. They have now passed Immaculate Heart in the MaxPreps national softball poll, coming in this week at No. 17.

On Tuesday — and it’s getting rather repetitive at this point — but it was another classic. An 11-inning thriller that certainly wasn’t short on drama. One year ago, Indian Hills won at South Plainfield to advance to the state final on a walkoff RBI gap shot from Nicole Paiotti to defeat West Morris, 2-1, in eight innings. This year, it was Gruelich doing the same in the 11th, driving home Shelby Allen, who started the inning on 2nd base with international tiebreaking rules in effect, with two outs — after Indian Hills failed to advance Allen in the previous at-bats. Greulich said Paiotti’s hit was the first thing she thought of after seeing her game-winner land in the left-center gap.

“This season has just been amazing,” Greulich said. “I love these girls, I love playing with them every day, hanging out with them all the time. Every day is something new. To now have the chance to win another state title, especially doing it for this year’s group of seniors, it’d be perfect. They deserve to go out with a perfect season.”

By no means did Indian Hills play its best game on Tuesday. In fact, it was probably one of the Braves’ worst performances of the year. Indian Hills made five errors — which is probably a season-high — it failed to execute several sacrifice bunts, they committed a pair of baserunning blunders with runners being thrown at second base, and aside from Allen’s two-out RBI single in the first (to score Nikki Mellone, who reached with a one-out walk) and Greulich’s game-winner in the 11th, Indian Hills just couldn’t get that key hit to provide Devin Durando with another insurance run. Durando, by the way, was terrific once again, going all 11 innings with 19 strikeouts while allowing just six hits. She got out of the 11th inning — after Warren Hills started with a runner on 2nd — without allowing a run. She said she “lives for that” and it completely set the tone for the bottom half of the inning.

“We just werent’t alert today,” Leicht said. ”I knew it at the school when you had to tell them twice to do something. They didn’t seem alert. It was a big game, and it’s not that we took Warren Hills lightly… we knew they had a pitcher, we knew they had a catcher so we couldn’t steal, and we knew they were scrappy. And that’s exactly what they were. We just weren’t right today.”

But even on a day when the Braves weren’t at their best, they still found a way to win — the sign of any great team and championship contender. In the bottom of the 10th, after Warren Hills had just taken a 2-1 lead, Indian Hills’ Nicole Leocata started the inning at 2nd base with international tiebreaking rules in effect. A failed sac bunt resulted in a strikeout and Indian Hills was down to its final two outs.

A wild pitch on the first pitch Maddie Levine saw moved Leocata to third, which was a huge turn of events. Levine, Saturday’s BCT final hero, proceeded to hit a fly ball to right… not that deep. Leocata tagged up at 3rd, the throw home was off-line a bit, and Leocata slid in head first into home plate just ahead of the tag to score the game-tying run and keep the dream season alive. It was a great at-bat from Levine against a big-time strikeout pitcher; Warren Hills’ Smith struck out 15 Braves on Tuesday and finished the season with 333.

In the top of the seventh — with Indian Hills leading, 1-0 — after surrendering a leadoff infield single to Warren Hills’ Rachel DeTore, Indian Hills’ Durando followed with two straight big strikeouts. One out away from wrapping things up in seven innings, chaos ensued.

Durando threw a wild pitch, allowing DeTore to head for second. Levine, Indian Hills’ catcher, tried nailing DeTore at second, but her throw went high and into center field. Greulich, Indian Hills’ center fielder, picked it up and tried getting DeTore at third, but her throw also went high, as DeTore scored the game-tying run in bizarre fashion.

As fate would have it, it was Levine delivering the game-tying RBI sac fly in the 10th and Greulich delivering the game-winning RBI single in the 11th. You can’t make this stuff up. Greulich, down on herself after the error, said she had to redeem herself any way she could.

“After making that error [in the 7th], I put my head right down, which I shouldn’t have done,” said Greulich, who was mobbed by her teammates at first base after coming through in the 11th. “I just felt like I was giving away the game. I knew I had to come through and somehow get it back for my team. Whether it was just getting on base, getting a hit, an RBI, somehow I had to get that run back. The way it ended was just unreal. We all felt we were due. It just happened to be me, but it could have been anybody. Everyone’s been doing it for us all year.”

“Everyone here supports each other, they encourage each other, it’s always, ‘You’re the one, you can do it,’ ” Leicht said. “Everyone is so close on this team that when your chance to come through comes up, everyone really wants to come through for everyone else. It’s a great group, an outstanding group. And hey, today was Karley’s day. She’s a little bit of the unsung hero with this team. Most people know our different players, but Karley keeps doing her thing a little under the radar. She’s a junior, a three-year starter for us (two years at 3B, this year at CF), she caught the last out in the state final last year and she’s been involved in all these big games just like everyone else. I’m not surprised she was able to come through like this today.”

Just prior to the rain delay in the top of the fourth, Indian Hills’ Durando got out of a bases loaded, no-out jam without allowing a run. A leadoff walk, sac bunt/error and another walk loaded the bases, but Indian Hills got the first out on a play at the plate, as Warren Hills’ Madey Smith tried scoring on a pitch that reached the back stop. Durando got a strikeout for the second out of the inning and a fly out to left to end the threat just before the rain came pouring down and both teams were sent to the buses for 81 minutes. In total, Warren Hills left 13 runners on base.

Indian Hills nearly ended things twice prior to Greulich’s game-winner. One batter prior, Julia Ferraro ripped a line drive down the right-field line that landed about three inches in foul territory. In the bottom of the 9th, Greulich — who was recently selected as a first-team All-County outfielder — nearly ended it with a single up the middle with Julia Collins (running for Durando, who led off the inning with an opposite-field double) on second base, but with the Warren Hills’ center fielder playing shallow and the ball being hit so hard, Collins had to hold up at third. In the same inning, after Kelsey Coughlin was hit by a pitch to load the bases with one out, Leocata stepped in with two outs and laced a line drive to the right-center gap, but Warren Hills’ CF Michelle Sykora tracked it down with a beautiful running game-saving catch.

“What we have to do now is take a few breaths and relax,” said Leicht, whose team will meet Central champion Ewing (who rallied for 5 runs in the top of the 7th Tuesday to defeat Hammonton, 7-4) in Saturday’s Group 3 final. “After the IHA game and after this game, we just need to relax. We have three days off now, so let’s all take a few deep breaths, realize what we’ve done to get to this point, and now let’s finish the job.”