If the game had the feel of a state playoff, it’s because, for all intents and purposes, it was.
With a berth in the Class 5A state softball championships at stake Thursday afternoon, Ephrata and Solanco met for the fourth time this season, this time in Quarryville for the District Three Class 5A quarterfinals.
On a perfect day for softball, under sun-splashed skies, the Golden Mules (22-2) punched their ticket with a 4-1 win.
A year ago at about this time, Manheim Township was rolling over Ephrata in the Lancaster-Lebanon League championship game when Adrian Shelley, the Mounts’ coach, surveyed the mood in his dugout and was less than delighted.
“Things got a little noncompetitive,’’ Shelley recalled Monday night at Clipper Magazine Stadium, with a goal medal around his neck.
“I said to the dugout, ‘we got to remember this, because it looks like we’re ready to tuck our tails and jump on a bus and go home.’’’ It was 11-2, Township. Shelley gave the ball to then-junior pitcher Ben Burkey, who “went out there and showed some grit.’’
The mythology of Sisyphus, the founder and first king of ancient Corinth, was his eternal task to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top.
The task before Ephrata’s softball team, making its first Lancaster-Lebanon League playoff appearance in 23 years, was not Sisyphean. At least at the start.
For five innings Friday afternoon in Mount Joy, the Mountaineers pushed the metaphorical boulder of a quarterfinal victory up the hill. Just when it seemed they had pushed it over the top — defeating host Donegal — the boulder rolled back and over them.
Ephrata 6, Lancaster Catholic 4 The Mounts (18-4) scored all their runs in the first four innings, getting big games from top-of-the-order guys Tyler McCracken (3-for-4, two RBIs, two runs) and Coy Schwanger (1-for-3, two runs).
It was 6-0 at that point, but the Crusaders were far from finished, and Ephrata coach Adrian Shelley ended up using four pitchers— in order, a senior (Mc-Cracken), junior (Dillon Shortuse), sophomore (Nathan Savage) and freshman (Camryn Simes).
The last three of those worked in the seventh, which Catholic’s Dylan Banzhof led off with a single.
It’s the time of the year when every pitch counts. When every mistake, however innocent, is magnified.
Of the 233 total pitches thrown by Ephrata’s Ellie Meier and Elizabethtown’s Breonna Edgell on Monday afternoon, none loomed larger than Edgell’s 0-1 offering to Addy Snyder in the third inning.
Here’s Harry Kalas with the call: “High towering fly to deep center field. Outta Here!!!”
We here at www.ephratamounts.com are proud sponsors of the Dodgeball for Diabetes tournament.