Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Team at peace as Sinton’s strange season ends

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Saturday, June 2, 2001
Team at peace as Sinton’s strange season ends
Girls survive losses, both in games and within squad to make state semis
By George Vondracek
Caller-Times
AUSTIN - The die-hard fans were lingering in the sultry evening, waiting for their chances to console and embrace the softball players from Sinton High School. Others quietly shuffled out of Red McCombs Field, preferring to express their feelings later at the team's hotel off Town Lake.
   Wade Wilson, in his third year as the Lady Pirates' coach, couldn't help but stop to soak in the surroundings.
   "This atmosphere," Wilson said, "is very special."
   To be sure, the feeling could have been more special. A 5-0 loss Thursday night by the seventh-ranked Lady Pirates to No. 4 Sanger brought an odd season to a close in the Class 3A semifinals.
   One could dwell on the ending. Sinton managed two hits off Sanger right-hander Amber Wood, who notched her 13th shutout and held the Lady Pirates without a run for only the third time in 34 games.
   One might even point to the internal problems the Lady Pirates experienced on the way to a 26-5-3 year, one in which the team quarreled and four seniors quit the squad.
   "I just can't say enough about these kids," Wilson said. "To be in this situation, no one would've thunk it."
   One could be even more succinct.
   "We weren't even expected to make the playoffs," sophomore right fielder Kari Haug said. "We united and came a whole hell of a lot farther than anyone expected."
   When Sinton's offense was on, it was on. The Lady Pirates topped double digits in runs nine times, second only to Sanger's 10 of the four 3A teams in the semis. And when the offense wasn't clicking, the Lady Pirates went to manufacturing runs.
   They nickle-and-dimed teams for runs. Bunts, slap hits and stolen bases - 153 of them in 160 attempts - helped the Lady Pirates fashion a streak of 19 straight unbeaten games entering the semifinals.
   That strategy proved to be no option against the Lady Indians (24-2-1).
   "Their game plan was to put pressure on us with bunts and trying to put the ball in play," said Sanger coach Kevin Lewis, whose team's three errors didn't hurt nearly as much as Sinton's three miscues. "But we don't usually make those kind of mistakes."
   Or, as Wilson said: "It's hard to string hits together when you only have two."
   Outside of Kelly Lankford's third-inning single and Beth Harrison's base hit in the fifth, Sinton got the ball out of the infield only two other times. Pitcher Amanda Stevens roped a flyout to deep center in the first off of the only offspeed pitch Wood threw, and Jessica Hartung popped out to shallow right to end the sixth.
   Thus, Sinton's season ended in the 3A semifinals for the second time in three years - the Lady Pirates were beaten, 11-0, by Graham in 1999. But for all the inner turmoil, the less-than-successful expectations of which Haug spoke and the semifinal loss, Stevens seemed to summarize what the Lady Pirates will recall most fondly about the season.
   "The team, and how close we are," said Stevens, the Texas Lutheran-bound pitcher who closed the year with a 19-5 record and her career at 70-15. "Going off to play college ball, I'll never get to play ball with these girls again. Just the love and unity we have is something I've never been a part of before."


George Vondracek can be reached at 886-3731 or vondracekg@caller.com

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