One out shy of reaching championship game, Comets fall to Lancers in extra innings

Charles City will play West Delaware on Friday at 4:45 p.m. in the third-place game, while the Lancers advance to championship game against No. 1 seed Carlisle.

Comet senior ace Sami Heyer arguably pitched the gutsiest game of her outstanding career, and that’s saying a lot. All 3 runs scored against her were unearned in eight-and-two-thirds innings pitched where she struck out seven while yielding seven hits and two walks.

Heyer’s counterpart was sophomore southpaw Ryann Cheek. The antithesis to the pitcher the Comets faced in Tuesday’s first-round win against Dallas Center-Grimes — changeup and dropball artist Erica Manning — Cheek throws a hot riser and gets many of her outs by way of strikeout.
Cheek fanned the first five Comet hitters she faced. One of her victims was Comet freshman Ashlyn Hoeft, whom Cheek fanned again in the fourth inning.

But when Hoeft faced Cheek for a third time in the sixth inning, she made some adjustments while standing back further in the box and drilled a 2-run home run well over the left-center field fence to break a scoreless tie.

The Lancers managed to load the bases in the latter half of the sixth, but Heyer was able to get Paige Westlin to fly out deep to Lydia Staudt in center field for the third out without any runs scoring.

In the seventh inning, North Scott capitalized on a pair of errors in the outfield to send the game to extra innings.

In the top of the ninth, it appeared that Charles City took the lead when Liz Fiser raced home from third and what looked like a passed ball. But it was ruled hitter Rachel Chambers got a piece of the ball when she swung at it.

In the latter half of the ninth, Lancer Sam Lee hit a grounder with eyes through the left-side of the infield scoring Kate Hayes — who led off the inning getting hit by a pitch — for the winning run.

Staudt had two of the Charles City’s six hits.

Drew Lewis, who came in the game after Hoeft’s homer, picked up the win after pitching three-and-two-thirds of shutout relief.

In the previous Class 4A semifinal, Carlisle junior Kennedy Preston hit a two-out, 2-run home run in the bottom of the eight inning to lift the Wildcats to a 7-6 win over West Delaware.

West Delaware was down 4-1 before rallying for 4 runs after two outs in the top of the sixth to take a 5-4 lead.

Carlisle tied it in its half of the sixth before the Hawks went up 6-5 in the top of the eighth.

NORTH SCOTT 3, CHARLES CITY 2 (9 inn)
CC AB R H BI NS AB R H BI
Lisabeth Fiser 5 0 1 0 Taylor Robertson 4 0 1 0
Lydia Staudt 4 1 2 0 Brooke Kilburg 5 1 1 0
Rachel Chambers 3 0 1 0 Rachel Anderson 5 1 1 0
Ashlyn Hoeft 4 1 1 2 Sam Lee 5 0 2 1
Allie Cross 4 0 1 0 Ryann Cheek 3 0 1 0
Alex Litterer 3 0 0 0 Ashlyn Shannon 4 0 1 0
Kiki Connell 3 0 0 0 Abby Moller 3 0 0 0
Samantha Heyer 2 0 0 0 Alexys Beadle 3 0 0 0
Sadie Gebel 4 0 0 0 Paige Westlin 1 0 0 0
Kate Hayes 2 1 0 0
Emma Sandknop 1 0 0 0
TOTALS 32 2 6 2 TOTALS 36 3 7 1
CHARLES CITY 000 002 000 — 2
NORTH SCOTT 000 000 201 — 3
LOB–CHARLES CITY 10, NORTH SCOTT 11. ERR–Alex Litterer,Allie Cross, Lydia Staudt, Ryann Cheek. 2B–BrookeKilburg. HR–Ashlyn Hoeft. HBP–Samantha Heyer, Kate Hayes, Ryann Cheek. SACB–Samantha Heyer, Rachel Chambers (2),
Lydia Staudt. SB–Alex Litterer, Lisabeth Fiser.
CHARLES CITY IP H R ER BB SO HR
Samantha Heyer 8.67 7 3 0 2 7 0
NORTH SCOTT
Ryann Cheek 5.33 3 2 2 1 11 1
Drew Lewis 3.67 3 0 0 1 6 0
PB–Rachel Anderson (2). WP–Ryann Cheek. BALK–DrewLewis. SO–Sadie Gebel (2), Samantha Heyer (2), RachelChambers (2), Kiki Connell (2), Lisabeth Fiser (2), AllieCross (2), Ashlyn Hoeft (3), Lydia Staudt (2), Kate Hayes,Ashlyn Shannon (2), Alexys Beadle (3), Abby Moller.BB–Alex Litterer, Kiki Connell, Taylor Robertson, AbbyMoller.
NOTES: Umpires: P-Dirk Sorenson, 1B-Richard Sebring, 3B-Phil Creese. WP-Lewis(2-2), LP-Heyer(34-4)