As her team celebrated on the field, taking pictures with the 3A East regional championship trophy Friday evening, River Hill coach Marni Rosenbaum struggled to find the words to describe what she had just witnessed.
The Hawks, trailing basically from the second inning on against visiting Mt. Hebron and facing a three-run deficit heading into the bottom of the seventh, had played the entire way with their backs against the wall. But, with their season on the line, Rosenbaum watched as her team delivered.
River Hill went on to score four times in the final inning, including a game-winning bases-loaded walk by Mary Ellen Tokar that scored pinch runner Hannah Brown with two outs, to earn a 13-12 victory and the program's second region title in three years.
"I don't recall ever being a part of a game like that … I'm not really even sure what to say," said Rosenbaum, who's been the varsity coach at River Hill the last 10 years. "More than anything, I just think it was the right girls at the right time and I'm so extremely proud of them for not giving up, when they very easily could have. I think there might have been a sense there at the end that for our nine seniors this is the last game they will ever play on this field.
"You could see the emotion, how badly they wanted this. Afterward, they all kept coming up to me saying how they couldn't stop crying."
River Hill (22-1), which advances to play CM Wright in the 3A state semifinals on Tuesday at the Bachman Softball Complex, ended up smacking four hits and drawing three walks in the seventh.
Courtney Colosimo kicked things off with a one-out single and then Sara Mascone walked and Kinsey Johnson (4-5) singled to load the bases.
Kristy Selby (3-5, 4 RBI), who ended up getting the win at pitcher, then laced a 2-RBI single to right center to make it a one-run game.
Mt. Hebron was planning on intentionally walking the next batter — Kallan Dirmeyer (3-5) — but she had other plans.
"They were having some trouble with their signs on the intentional walk so I knew what was happening, but I also was ready in case she missed. So when I saw that ball in the middle of the plate, I figured I might as well hit it," said Dirmeyer, who laced a hard-hit ball up the middle to score Johnson from third and tie the game.
Johnson said that everyone was simply feeding off each other's energy during the comeback. "That last inning, it was just … we went crazy. We were so hyped up and we wanted it so bad," she said.
After a Sabrina Curtiss walk, Mt. Hebron pitcher Evvie Buehlman got a strikeout to bring Tokar up with the bases loaded and the game in the balance. On a full-count, Tokar watched Buehlman's pitch just narrowly miss the outside corner and she headed down to first base screaming the entire way as the Hawks' bench spilled onto the field.
"I'm not going to lie, I got up there and was really feeling nervous. I kind of thought I was going to throw up," Tokar said. "But we took a timeout and Kinsey … she really calmed me down. I just knew I had to be patient and when that last pitch was a ball, it almost felt like a dream. I'm just so happy we get the chance to keep going."
For Mt. Hebron (17-5), which came in as the defending 3A East region champions, the walk-off loss was a tough pill to swallow after a game in which it had accumulated 15 hits and scored more runs (12) than River Hill had allowed in its previous six games combined.
Buehlman (2-4, HR, 3 RBI, 3 runs), Rylee Kinsella (3-5, HR, triple, 5 RBI) and Kathryn Diaz (3-4) all had big efforts at the plate.
Ultimately, as coach Chuck Struhar acknowledged afterward, it just wasn't the Vikings day.
"They gave everything they had. We made a couple bad plays that let in runs, but we never hung our heads and kept playing the entire game," Struhar said. "River Hill is a very good team and we pushed them to the limit. But, in the end there … we got there, we had the lead but just couldn't put them away."
River Hill had struck first in the bottom of the first inning for three runs, getting an RBI hit from Dirmeyer and also capitalizing on a couple Mt. Hebron errors.
The Vikings, however, came right back in the top of the second and exploded for six runs. An RBI single by Kamden Lloyd, a 2-RBI single from Buehlman and a 3-RBI triple by Kinsella down the left-field line did the heavy lifting on the way to the 6-3 cushion.
River Hill clawed back within one in the third, getting RBI hits from Selby and Curtiss, before Mt. Hebron extended things back out to two in the fourth on a solo home run from Buehlman.
It wasn't until the bottom of the fifth that River Hill managed to pull back even at 7-7, this time taking advantage of a walk, a hit batter and a Mt. Hebron error.
Again, however, Mt. Hebron seemed to have an answer for everything. The Vikings put four more runs on the board in the sixth, generating five hits and sending 10 batters to the plate. Kinsella and Steph Bluhm provided the biggest hits in the inning.
"We work real hard on our hitting and it shows," Struhar said. "We put up 12 (runs) today against a couple very good pitchers."
Still undeterred, River Hill clawed back with two in the sixth to make it 11-9. Kinsella added to the Vikings lead with a solo home run in the top of the seventh, making it 12-9 heading into the Hawks' final at bat.
"Every inning we just chipped, we chipped, we chipped," Johnson said. "There were moments when you tried to think about 'oh my gosh, what if this is it?' But then as soon as you thought about that …you were like 'no, fight for our seniors.' We have nine seniors … we all want to win."
As the Hawks completed the comeback in the seventh, the one-run victory marked the first time all season that the team has won a game decided by a single run.
River Hill 13, Mt. Hebron 12
123 456 7 R-H-E
MH 060 104 1 12-15-5
RH 302 022 4 13-12-3