John's Journal: No. 1 Vs. No. 1 And One Run Makes The Difference

WELLS – Let’s set the scene: It’s a warm and windy day in southern Minnesota and two top-ranked and undefeated softball teams are deciding who will win the day. The visitors from Randolph (18-0) are battle-tested, having won the Class 2A state championship a season ago. The home team, Class A United South Central (16-0), is the upstart that’s having a remarkable season and hoping to reach the state tournament for the first time ever.

Thompson Park in Wells is a treasure, with softball and baseball diamonds next to each other, plenty of playground space for the littles and Wells Golf Club just beyond the softball left field. The wind is whipping on this Monday, coming in hard from center field and kicking dust into the faces of the hitters, catchers and home plate umpire Kip Wachal. A large contingent of fans made the 90-minute drive from Randolph and the locals (proposed nickname: Wells Angels) arrived on foot, in vehicles and several golf carts.

The prevailing theory before first pitch is that one single moment might decide the outcome. The stars of each team are well-known: Randolph senior pitcher Carter Raymond will be throwing the rock for the Minnesota Gophers next season and last week she joined USC junior Mariah Anderson in the 1,000-career-strikeout club this season. They rank first and second in the state in strikeouts; Anderson with 260 and Raymond with 216. Those two toss no-hitters like they were throwing candy during a parade and their earned-run averages are microscopic (Carter 0.47, Mariah 0.13).

Raymond and Anderson are tremendous at the plate, too, hitting leadoff. Anderson’s batting average is .609 and Raymond’s is .419. Everyone knew they would pitch well, and the next question was whether one of them would be a star at the plate, too.

The tone for the game was set right away and if you guessed that the tone was dominant pitching you are correct. Anderson struck out the side in the first inning and had eight whiffs through three innings, giving up a single to Randolph’s Ruby Heiman in the second. Raymond was hit by a pitch with two outs in the top of the third, she stole second and third and was stranded there.

Raymond threw a no-hitter until Olivia Bungum doubled in the bottom of the fourth. And things went that way through the fifth and sixth and seventh innings, with the score 0-0 going into extras.

The pitchers were phenomenal, as expected, and their final numbers were staggering. Anderson threw 125 pitches (30 balls, 95 strikes) and Raymond threw 87 pitches (16 balls, 71 strikes). Combined, the state's top two pitchers whirled 212 times (46 balls, 166 strikes). Some of the innings were hard to believe. Raymond threw one ball in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings, and no balls against eight strikes in the sixth. Anderson had three three-ball innings and the same number of two-ball innings.

Randolph had more chances to score but couldn’t push a run across. Nine Rockets reached base, including two in the sixth, eighth and ninth innings. A few bunt attempts were just that … attempts.

“We had a lot of chances but our bunting kind of let us down today,” said Rockets coach Dennis Trom. “We just couldn't put the ball down on the ground.”

The end came in the bottom of the ninth in a game that lasted one hour and 45 minutes. Raymond opened by recording her 13^th and final strikeout. That brought Anderson to the plate. Mariah had fouled out, flew out and grounded out in her previous at-bats, and this time she swung on an 0-2 changeup – a pitch she wasn’t expecting – and whacked it into the outfield.

It was a hard ball for any defender to manage. It bounced in front of the diving left fielder, skipped a couple times and rolled to the fence. Mariah was thinking “double” until she saw the ball going deep. USC coach Todd Schmidtke waved her around third base and she slid into the plate for a 1-0, unforgettable inside-the-park walkoff homer for the win.

“I thought she would stop it and it would be like a double or something,” Anderson said. As she rolled toward third base and looked at her coach, she thought, “ ‘Oh gosh, why is he sending me?’ But I trusted him.”

Schmidtke said, “As soon as I saw (the outfielder) dive I said to myself, ‘This is the chance. We're going to take it. She’s our fastest player and she's going to make it.’ And she did.

“She kept hustling. She was hustling out of the box because she was around second when the girl was getting to the ball. And that's how she plays. She just plays the right way.”

Anderson gave up four hits and struck out 19 Rockets. Her home run was USC’s third hit of the day, with Bungum’s single in the fourth and Taylor Schroeder hitting a leadoff double in the seventh.

As the regular season ends this week, both teams can use Monday’s experience as motivation for the postseason.

“We’ve played in these kinds of games before, so we were OK,” Trom said. “We had a couple chances with runners on second and third or whatever and we just needed that one hit and we just couldn't get the one hit today.”

He credited the USC Rebels on their hard-fought win.

“That's how you win these state tournament kind of games, and that's what this was,” he said.

“To knock them off is amazing,” Schmidtke said. “That's one of the best teams in Minnesota, and not just Double-A. It was just really good to see the girls make some plays. It was a team win.”

--MSHSL staff member John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Bluesky at johnmilleamn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected] or [email protected]