By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
LEXINGTON – They’ve gotten close. Just not close enough for a proud Highlands program that by next year will have five alums playing college softball.
But getting that first state tournament softball win, that’s another story for the kids from Ft. Thomas as they fell by a single run for a second straight season Thursday at UK’s John Cropp Stadium.
“We knew that was our best chance in the last three years,” said Highlands Coach Milt Horner after his team’s 3-2 loss to Louisville Assumption. Last year’s loss, also by a run – 1-0 – came at the hands of Johnson Central.
“This one’s a tougher loss,” Horner said of the first-round game, “because we were right there.”
Actually, they were ahead, 1-0, from the jump as Highlands’ two seniors – Bailey Markus, on a walk that sandwiched a sacrifice bunt from sophomore Morgan Pompilio to move Markus into scoring position where another senior, Michelle Barth, singled her home.
That early lead had Horner thinking this year might be different. But then reality set in. “We knew that’d be a tough team,” he said of an Assumption club that had to beat powers Male, Eastern and Ballard who combined for 76 wins, to even get here.
“We start two eighth-graders (and four sophomores) and they have 900 girls – twice as many as we do,” Horner said of the difficulties of competing in an unclassified sport.
With just one championship in fast-pitch softball since it debuted in 1995 (Ryle in 2006), “for Northern Kentucky to get where we want to be, we need to develop depth,” Horner said. “None of us can go one-thru-nine like they do.”
Out of his 16-player roster, “eight are eighth- and ninth-graders,” Horner said, “Assumption doesn’t even have an eighth grade.” But the bad news is that the Rockets (29-11), who face Daviess County at 10 Saturday in the quarterfinals, started just one senior.
It was a junior, second baseman Lauren Campisano, who got the Rockets going with a second-inning game-tying home run and then her middle infield mate, also a junior, Lauren Satterly, tripled for an RBI in the third.
And that was it for Assumption’s scoring although the Bluebirds, who managed just four hits off starter Ava Lou Mattingly and closer Satterly, in from shortstop, would add a run in the fourth on a Barth double, a sacrifice and a fielder’s choice groundout from eighth-grader Layla Zepf.
One of the reasons that was it for the Highlands’ offense was the way Satterly caught and stopped everything hit anywhere near the middle of the field. “Their shortstop is good,” Horner said of the .402 hitter.
So was an offense that scored 330 runs in 39 games (an 9.4 average) “and we held them to three – and gave ‘em two,” Horner said of the work from sophomore pitcher Kaitlyn Dixon, who kept the athletic Rockets pretty much in check on six hits.
“If we played them 10 games, we could get them three or four,” Horner said of his Birds who finish 27-13.
But this wasn’t one of those games.
SCORING SUMMARY
HIGHLANDS 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 – 2 4 2
ASSUMPTION 0 2 1 0 0 0 X – 3 6 1
WP: Mattingly (19-6) LP: Dixon (21-6)
LEADING HITTERS: Assumption: Campisano HR, RBI; Satterly 2-3, triple, RBI; Campisano HR, RBI; Highlands: Barth 2-2, RBI; Zepf RBI.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
Highlands won a game in the state tourney in 14 and 16