Only Cougars Could’ve Envisioned This Reality

6 years ago
Only Cougars Could’ve Envisioned This Reality

Apr 23, 2019
Jeff Falk
No comments yet
FEATURE STORIES, Palmyra, Softball
1541 Views

BY JEFF FALK

HUMMELSTOWN – Everybody entertains hopes and dreams and goals. The Palmyra softball squad is no exception.

What’s different about the Cougars’ aspirations is that they may have put themselves in a position to exceed them.

On an overcast Tuesday evening at Lower Dauphin High School, Palmyra’s band-wagon thrill ride picked up a few more passengers, following a 12-0 Mid-Penn Keystone Division drubbing of rival Lower Dauphin, shortened to five innings by the mercy rule. To back the shut-out hurling of senior Abbey Krahling, the Cougars posted seven runs on the scoreboard in the top of the third inning.

The triumph was the Cougars’ sixth victory in-a-row and kept them undefeated in the Keystone Division. Palmyra now sports an overall mark of 10-1 and a conference record of 10-0.

It was also Palmyra’s second win over Lower Dauphin this season. Back on March 28th in Palmyra, the Cougars had defeated the Falcons 8-5.

The result made Lower Dauphin 4-8 on the year and 4-5 in the Keystone.

The Cougars were situated sixth in the latest District Three Class AAAAA power rankings.

“We’re always happy to beat Lower Dauphin,” said Palmyra head coach Tod Whitman. “I don’t know the last time we swept Lower Dauphin in a season. That’s a feather in our cap. It’s (the season) going well. There’s no denying that.

“Before the game today, another senior, Molly Nelson, got the team together and offered some encouraging words,” continued Whitman. “There’s another leader for us. She just reiterated the importance of the game. I just want to sit in the stands. The girls are running this team. We have great leaders and this team has a good mix. That chemistry is a huge part of our success. No one has been left out. Everyone has a role.”

“My personal expectation for the team at the beginning of the season was for us to make the most of what we’ve got,” said A. Krahling. “We needed to be a good hitting team. All the work and practice, and being in the moment, has put us in front of everyone.”

The Cougars jumped out to a 2-0 lead with a pair of runs in the top of the third inning.

Samanatha Krahling and Sara Boyer got the job done for Palmyra with back-to-back, two-out RBI-doubles. But the threat was started by Sarah Quigley’s walk and Nelson’s sacrfice bunt.

Then in the top of the fourth, the Cougars blew it open by sending a dozen batters to the plate and scoring seven times to extend their lead to 9-0. The first six Palmyra hitters in the frame reached base, and all six scored.

Nelson’s two-run double highlighted the rally, but it also featured RBIs from Quigley, Kenzie Yingst, A. Krahling and Brianna Michelson.

“They did a nice job offensively,” said Whitman of his charges. “We haven’t walked a lot this season, and sometimes being aggressive has hurt us. But their (the Falcons’) pitchers threw strikes. When we swing, we tend to put the ball in play. I think there was one strikeout. It was a nice mixture for us.

“One of our keys is that the bottom of our lineup gets on base,” Whitman continued. “I think in the third inning our nine-hitter (Qigley) walked, then we have one, two, three and four coming up for us, and they’re hitting the crap out of the ball right now. That (the third inning) started with our number-nine hitter getting on base.”

“It was a complete win,” said A. Krahling. “Our bats were just on fire. From the beginning of the season to now, they’ve been blossoming. I’m very proud of this team.”

A. Krahling made all that run-support work to her advantage.

At one point, the hard-throwing right-hander struck out five Falcons in-a-row, and finished with six overall, to go with a single walk. A. Krahling gave up three hits and allowed more than a single runner to reach base in only one Lower Dauphin at-bat.

“She did have good pop,” said Whitman of A. Krahling. “She’ll get her strikeouts, but Lower Dauphin is not a bad hitting team. They put the ball in play. They made us play defense.

“She’s (A. Krahling) typically pretty aggressive,” added Whitman. “She gets ahead early, then goes out of the zone and tries to get you to chase. It’s a credit to (catcher) Sara Boyer knowing how she works. She doesn’t work in the middle of the plate. Her goal is not to strike out batters. Lower Dauphin got some good swings.”

“I thought my change-up really worked well today,” said A. Krahling. “I’m a location pitcher. That’s what I rely on. That and my mechanics.

“Sara and I are telepathically connected,” continued A. Krahling. “We have been since we were freshmen. She knows what I want to throw and she calls it right away. Maybe one time this year I shook her off, that is all. There’s a huge amout of trust there.”

It was Palmyra’s three-run, top-of-the-fifth that evoked the mercy rule.

Boyer blasted another RBI-double, a two-run job with two outs. In front of Boyer, Nelson and S. Krahling had singled and Yingst had walked.

“There was a lot of momentum today,” said Whitman. “Coming off the Easter weekend and having three days off, I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to respond. It was nice to have them get the momentum and hit the ball.

“First and foremost, I was pleased with the bats,” Whitman added. “It was nice to have everyone in the lineup hitting. It was complete, all the way through the lineup. Everybody who played got on base. It was a complete game. The defense was solid. Our pitching and our defense have been our go-tos this year. When we got up, it was nice that the defense didn’t get lackadaisical. You can get lulled into a lack of focus. You like to see that concentration, no matter what the score is.”

“My job is pitching to batters and getting them out,” said A. Krahling. “Anyway I can, to get them out. That’s my job and I’m doing it.”

To purchase images in this article email jkfalk2005@yahoo.com, or to view more to to https://lebanonsportsbuzz.com/photo-gallery/.

2019 Palmyra Softball Schedule

Date	Opponents	Outcomes
3/264:15p	Susquehanna Township (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Palmyra High School	(W) 5 – 3
3/284:15p	Lower Dauphin (Hummelstown, PA) Location: Palmyra High School	(W) 8 – 5
4/14:15p	@ Mechanicsburg (Mechanicsburg, PA) Location: Mechanicsburg High School	(W) 6 – 3
4/34:15p	@ Central Dauphin East (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Central Dauphin East High School	(W) 10 – 3
4/611:00a	@ Lampeter-Strasburg (Lampeter, PA) Location: Lampeter-Strasburg High School	(L) 11 – 0
4/94:15p	Harrisburg (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Palmyra High School	(W) 11 – 0
4/114:15p	Hershey (Hershey, PA) Game Details: Pink Game	(W) 4 – 2
4/124:15p	Big Spring (Newville, PA) Location: Palmyra High School	(W) 3 – 0
4/154:15p	Bishop McDevitt (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Palmyra High School	(W) 2 – 1 (8)
4/174:15p	@ Susquehanna Township (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Susquehanna Township High School	(W) 5 – 1
4/234:15p	@ Lower Dauphin (Hummelstown, PA) Location: Lower Dauphin High School
4/254:15p	Mechanicsburg (Mechanicsburg, PA) Location: Palmyra High School
4/277:00p	@ Central Dauphin (Harrisburg, PA) Game Details: at Dauphin Middle Paxton Community Park
4/294:15p	Central Dauphin East (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Palmyra High School
5/14:15p	@ Harrisburg (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Harrisburg High School
5/34:00p	Cedar Cliff (Camp Hill, PA) Location: Palmyra High School
5/76:30p	@ Hershey (Hershey, PA) Location: Hershey High School
5/94:15p	@ Bishop McDevitt (Harrisburg, PA) Location: Bishop McDevitt High School

PIAA District Three

Class AAAAA Power Rankings

AAAAA	School	W	L	T	Rating	TWP	OWP	TWPW	OWPW	TWPL	OWPL
1	Lampeter Strasburg	13-	0-	0	0.818505	1.000000	0.596677	15.8	139.3	0.0	94.2
2	Spring Grove	11-	1-	0	0.786474	0.944030	0.593905	12.7	143.3	0.8	98.0
3	Northeastern	11-	1-	0	0.785678	0.936090	0.601842	12.5	140.5	0.9	93.0
4	Donegal	13-	0-	0	0.780972	1.000000	0.513271	13.3	119.9	0.0	113.7
5	Twin Valley	10-	1-	0	0.769681	0.931174	0.572301	11.5	112.4	0.9	84.0
6	Palmyra	9-	1-	0	0.750948	0.922727	0.540996	10.2	107.6	0.9	91.3
7	Northern York	11-	0-	0	0.742841	1.000000	0.428536	11.9	85.8	0.0	114.4
8	Daniel Boone	10-	2-	0	0.717588	0.856000	0.548418	10.7	113.6	1.8	93.5
9	Elizabethtown	10-	4-	0	0.713108	0.797386	0.610102	12.2	151.8	3.1	97.0
10	Greencastle Antrim	5-	2-	0	0.704587	0.765517	0.630117	5.6	105.5	1.7	61.9
11	Cedar Cliff	7-	4-	0	0.696549	0.727660	0.658525	8.6	138.9	3.2	72.0
12	Exeter Township	7-	3-	0	0.688874	0.773148	0.585872	8.4	105.6	2.5	74.6
13	Manheim Central	10-	3-	0	0.673504	0.800000	0.518898	10.2	127.7	2.6	118.4
14	Waynesboro	8-	3-	0	0.669889	0.770563	0.546844	8.9	109.2	2.7	90.5
15	Governor Mifflin	8-	4-	0	0.660865	0.731092	0.575033	8.7	110.6	3.2	81.7
16	Mechanicsburg	8-	4-	0	0.651388	0.740157	0.542891	9.4	113.6	3.3	95.7
17	Garden Spot	8-	4-	0	0.625701	0.686957	0.550834	7.9	135.5	3.6	110.5
18	Shippensburg	4-	3-	0	0.610609	0.595420	0.629173	3.9	104.6	2.7	61.7
19	New Oxford	7-	6-	0	0.601556	0.618677	0.580631	8.0	134.3	4.9	97.0
20	Solanco	6-	6-	0	0.599557	0.608333	0.588829	7.3	140.5	4.7	98.1
21	South Western	6-	6-	0	0.588852	0.578512	0.601488	7.0	145.5	5.1	96.4
22	Lower Dauphin	4-	7-	0	0.506287	0.447489	0.578151	4.9	103.2	6.1	75.3
23	Susquehannock	4-	7-	0	0.493358	0.439024	0.559766	4.5	119.7	5.8	94.1
24	Muhlenberg	3-	7-	0	0.475712	0.346154	0.634061	3.2	100.2	6.0	57.8
25	Gettysburg	5-	8-	0	0.459907	0.393258	0.541366	5.3	127.6	8.1	108.1
26	Cocalico	4-	9-	0	0.419278	0.298755	0.566584	3.6	137.9	8.5	105.5
27	Ephrata	2-	10-	0	0.414703	0.240385	0.627760	2.5	151.8	7.9	90.0
28	Red Land	1-	9-	0	0.383744	0.148810	0.670886	1.3	135.2	7.2	66.3
29	Hershey	1-	9-	0	0.355799	0.137363	0.622777	1.3	134.8	7.9	81.7
30	Dover	0-	12-	0	0.283921	0.000000	0.630936	0.0	136.9	10.2	80.1
31	William Penn	0-	9-	0	0.257359	0.000000	0.571908	0.0	127.9	9.2	95.7
32	Milton Hershey	0-	8-	0	0.255043	0.000000	0.566762	0.0	79.0	7.8	60.4

Mid-Penn Conference

Keystone Division Standings

School	Division	%	Overall	%
Palmyra Area High School	9-0-0	1.000	10-1-0	0.909
Bishop McDevitt High School	8-1-0	0.889	9-2-0	0.818
Mechanicsburg Area High School	5-1-0	0.833	5-1-0	0.833
Lower Dauphin High School	4-2-0	0.667	4-2-0	0.667
Susquehanna Township High School	3-2-0	0.600	4-2-0	0.667
Central Dauphin East High School	1-1-0	0.500	2-1-0	0.667
Hershey High School	1-7-0	0.125	1-9-0	0.100
Harrisburg High School	0-0-0	0.000	0-0-0	0.000