Broad Run chokes Tunstall’s hopes for championship, 2-1

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RADFORD — Roger Cook stood with his hands on his hips, watching smiling Broad Run players collect gold medals, one at a time. The longtime Tunstall softball coach eventually lowered his head in defeat, picking it up just in time to see the Spartans, his nemesis, hoist the state championship trophy.

The Big Red Machine came to a grinding halt once again, as Tunstall succumbed to Broad Run 2-1 in a staggering 11 innings in the Group AA state championship game Sunday at Veteran’s Field in Radford. The defeat marked the first of the season for Tunstall (23-1), the first since the Trojans fell 4-0 to the Spartans in last year’s state title game. The loss also marked the third time in as many seasons that Broad Run (22-4) ended Tunstall’s season here, as the Spartans took a 1-0 victory in nine innings in the 2007 semifinals.

“I thought it was our day. Even before the game,” Cook said, “and before we scored the first run, I honestly thought that it was our day.”

This isn’t the way this storybook season was supposed to end.

Not for this team.

Not for these seven seniors.

Not for this coach.

Cook, the only head coach in Tunstall softball history, is retiring after leading the Trojans for better than a quarter century. In that time he’s unquestionably established one of the premier softball programs in the state, compiling a 488-84 career record in 26 years that, when included, will place him second all-time in the Virginia High School League record book.

“We told ourselves coming out here that it was our last day, there was no tomorrow and don’t hold anything back,” Tunstall senior pitcher Brittany Arnn said, “so we gave everything we had for 11 innings.”

Arnn, who crumpled in the circle after surrendering the game-winning hit, finishes her high school career with a record of 79-11, an ERA of less than 0.40 and the school’s all-time strikeout record. She struck out four, walked one and surrendered two earned runs on 11 hits in the loss after leading the Trojans to the state quarterfinals as a freshman, the state semis as a sophomore and the state championship game as a junior and senior. There was just one more step remaining for her and this senior class, a step this group now knows it will never take.

Jenn Soroka made sure of that in the 11th inning, when her double to left-center field with two outs scored Maggie Betz from first base to end the epic battle and an era at Tunstall High School.

“It was crazy. It didn’t hit me until everybody started running out on the field. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we just scored!’” Betz said. “I expected to slide but then I realized I didn’t have to. Once I crossed I was like, ‘Should I touch it again, just to be sure?’ So I stepped on it like two more times just to double check I scored.

“It’s unbelievable.”

Everything seemed to be going so well for the Trojans, at least at first. The storybook ending was waiting to be written — Cook, Arnn and the bulk of the team going out with a state championship victory against Broad Run, the squad that had bedeviled them for so long — especially when Heather Francisco’s base hit in the third scored Taylor Dix from second for a 1-0 Tunstall lead. The run was the first Tunstall managed to score against Broad Run in the last three years and provided not only a boost of confidence embodied by the Trojans’ squeals, but the knowledge that the Spartans were, in fact, mortal.

Former Broad Run pitcher Caitlyn Delahaba, an EA Sports first-team All-American and two-time Virginia Gatorade Player of the Year — the one who orchestrated 26 no-hitters and 13 perfect games in her high school career and didn’t surrender a single earned run as a senior last season — was no longer around.

Tunstall teed off against Broad Run pitcher Judy Betz, who struck out 13 but allowed eight hits and four walks.

But that didn’t stop the Spartans from capturing their third consecutive state title, especially after surrendering only one run.

“Obviously, they’re a great organization with a great coach,” Broad Run coach Ed Steele said, praising the Trojans after the marathon outing. “They come prepared. They’ve beaten everybody in their half of the state and I know that when we’re in a game with them we have to play hard to win.”

Broad Run tied the game in the fifth inning when it managed to load the bases with nobody out, a situation that mirrored the 2007 state semifinal between these teams, when Tunstall failed to score despite having the bases juiced with no outs in the sixth.

“I was on third and we failed,” Tunstall senior Jenna Rudder, then a sophomore, said. “I can remember that, clear as day.”

It seemed the Trojans were destined to exorcize the Broad Run demon one inning at a time, reliving various scenarios and correcting the mistakes of the past, especially after throwing a Spartans runner out at home on a squeeze bunt in the fourth, a situation that mirrored an unsuccessful play in the 2008 title game.

But unlike the Trojans in 2007, Broad Run managed to push a run across with the bases loaded in the fifth when Soroka’s sacrifice fly to left allowed Megan Waterman to score, knotting the contest at 1-1. The throw home from Francisco was right on target and in time to beat Waterman, but Tunstall catcher Megan Dillion was unable get a hold of it with the runner quickly bearing down on home.

“I dropped it. I saw her coming and Heather’s throw was good,” said Dillion, who led the Trojans with three hits and caught all 11 innings despite undergoing reconstructive knee surgery for a torn ACL late last year. “It one-hopped like it’s supposed to and I just dropped it and she scored.”

Despite multiple base runners and scoring opportunities for both teams — including a glaring instance when Dix was thrown out at the plate by a country mile in the 10th — the contest remained tied until the bottom of the 11th. Cook, coaching third, never put up a signal to stop Dix after a double by Francisco, and the freshman, who started the play at first, chugged right past third while trying to score.

“I was glad I got a hit to move her,” Francisco said, “but when she got thrown out I was kind of devastated.”

If Dix had stopped, the Trojans would have had runners on second and third with only one out. They still had a runner in scoring position with two outs, but the Trojans compounded their problems when Francisco was thrown out while trying to steal third, ending the inning.

It was only one of several squandered opportunities by both teams, however, and truth be told, this was a game that neither team deserved to lose.

At the end, though, there were the Trojans.

Holding silver.

Once again.