Riverside Brookfield High School softball seniors Trinity Stevenson and Abby Weinert composed their first TikTok video Friday by taking off their spikes one last time and then running onto the outfield grass. The two are pretty much finished with the sport competitively after being softball teammates since fifth grade when Stevenson moved to the area.
“We’re not playing in the summer so we knew we wanted to make this,” Weinert said.
“We started together. We have to end it together,” Stevenson said.
The 10-0, five-inning loss to state-title favorite Marist in the Class 4A Marist Sectional final ended the Bulldogs’ best overall season in years – a 27-5 record, their second straight regional title and an Upstate Eight Conference East Division title.
“We knew our goal was honestly just to make it to this game. We’ve worked all season for this game,” Stevenson said. “No matter what the outcome was, we had so much fun over the season and we just grew together.”
The sectional’s No. 2 seed reached the finals with a 14-4 five-inning victory over No. 3 Downers Grove South (24-7), which scored double-digit runs 17 times this season and took a 3-0 lead in the top of the first inning.
Against Marist (36-1), sophomore Mia Melendez hit a changeup for a two-out single in the first inning, but that was the only RBHS baserunner against senior pitcher and Wisconsin recruit Soleil Tate, who struck out six.
The RedHawks advanced to the state semifinals by beating St. Charles East 10-1 Monday.
“It’s really hard to get to a 4A sectional final game especially when you run into a team like (Marist),” RBHS coach Emma Jarrell said. “Super-proud of the girls. This was a goal of ours and hopefully next year we can push through and get further.”
Marist collected seven hits, including four home runs against pitchers Reese Milchhoefer (1 strikeout, 1 walk) and Amelia Pytel, who was relieved after walking the first three batters in a six-run first. Junior center fielder Sophia Runquist caught another potential home run in the fourth before a double and back-to-back homers for the RedHawks last three runs.
Against Downers South, Milchhoefer again relieved Pytel in the first and allowed just one run and five hits over her 4.2 innings.
“It was a really difficult situation and I was a little frazzled at first but I just clamed myself down and pitched and my defense had my back,” Milchhoefer said. “From that point, I kind of knew I just to be calm and do what I’ve always done.”
RBHS pulled ahead 11-4 with a five-run third that included Melendez hitting her 15th home run to tie the single-season school record by Jessie Hutchens in 2010.
“I didn’t realize it as soon as I hit it but as I was rounding second I was like, ‘Oh my God. I tied (the record).’ That’s why I got more excited when I was rounding third,” she said.
Melendez also was named the UEC East Player of the Year, finishing with a .447 batting average and 44 runs batted in. Stevenson, junior Alexis Busse, and sophomores Pytel and Brailyn Naylor also were all-conference and Milchhoefer was honorable mention all-conference.
“(Player of the Year) meant a lot to me and that my hard work has paid off but really none of that would have happened if my team hadn’t done so well in conference so it’s really a team effort, too,” Melendez said.