‘It was just a rush of energy’: Miller’s groundout plates Hays as Monroe City walks off with district semifinal victory

LEWISTOWN, Mo. — Makenna Miller had to put the ball in play.

By doing so, she sent the Monroe City softball team to the Class 2 District 5 championship game in the process.

The Panthers junior third baseman strode to the plate with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning of Thursday’s district semifinal with Monroe City and South Shelby tied at 4 and Naaron Hays representing the winning run at third base.

“I just knew I had to put it in play,” Miller said.

Even if she did, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion Hays was going to score. On a 1-0 pitch, Miller hit a ground ball to Lady Birds first baseman Maicyn Ratliff, who fielded the ball cleanly and flipped to second baseman Gracynn Lanpher to retire Miller. Unbeknownst to Miller, as soon as Ratliff turned her back to home plate to make the toss to first, Hays broke for home.

“I didn’t know she was scoring at all,” Miller said. “I thought I’d just lost the game.”

Hays slid safely across the plate to push the second-seeded Panthers to a 5-4 victory and through to the district title game against top-seeded Highland at 1 p.m. Saturday.

“I was ready to go, but I was waiting for (Ratliff) to throw it,” Hays said. “Then (coach Melissa Chinn) was like, ‘You’ve gotta go! You’ve gotta go!’ I just knew I needed to go. I had to get it done.”

A play that took about five seconds seemed like an eternity to Chinn in the third base coach’s box.

“I could have jumped on (Hays) and ran home with her. You can’t get there fast enough,” Chinn said. “I might have screamed like 100 times in that millisecond I was trying to get her to go, but hey, she got there.”

The Panthers in the dugout flooded onto the field to celebrate with Hays and Miller.

“I was so happy. My blood was pumping,” Miller said. “They all just came out of the dugout, and they were jumping. It just made me so happy.”

Hays felt on top of the world, especially as Panthers senior pitcher Audri Youngblood picked Hays up off the ground in a jubilatory hug.

“It was just a rush of energy,” Hays said. “I can’t even explain it.”

The walk-off completed the Panthers’ second comeback of the night. South Shelby took a 4-3 lead in the top of the fifth when Hays misplayed a ball at shortstop, allowing Bella Cook and Madison Wilt to score. 

“We were just pumped,” South Shelby coach Sarah Elliott said. “We were looking for any time that we could squeeze in some runs because when you go ahead you take that momentum away a little bit. We wanted to get that momentum as much as we could.”

The Panthers got runners to second and third with no outs in the bottom half, but Lady Birds pitcher Callie McWilliams induced a Taitym Foltz ground out and a Miller pop out before striking out Rylie Mulvaney looking to end the inning.

“We had some missed opportunities, but we kept our heads high, and we came back and got the next one,” Panthers sophomore second baseman Bradi Keller said. “We got hyped in the dugout, and we came back ready to be strong.”

Youngblood set down the Lady Birds in order in the top of the sixth. Youngblood singled with one out in the bottom of the inning then reached third on a passed ball. Keller delivered a sacrifice fly to drive in Youngblood and tie the game.

“My goal is to get on, but especially when Audri was at third, I knew I just had to get the ball somewhere far away so she could either tag up or just go,” Keller said. “I was just trying to get the bat on it and get her scored.”

Neither team led by more than a run, and Chinn said it felt as if the game could turn on a dime at any given moment.

“These are the games that you live for when you play softball,” Chinn said. “It’s always better when you come out on top.”

Monroe City (18-10) will seek revenge on district host Highland, which defeated the Panthers by a combined score of 30-1 in two Clarence Cannon Conference matchups this season. Youngblood didn’t pitch in either game, though, and the University of Kansas commit will take the ball on Saturday.

“This is what we’ve been preparing for, to get to that district championship and show what we can do,” Chinn said. “We haven’t pitched Audri against them yet, so let’s see if we can give them a game.”