West's run ends at state

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By Andrew Petersen | Sunday, July 20, 2008 |

Action from the Iowa High School State Softball Tournament played Friday at Rogers Sports Complex in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Sioux City Journal/Lee Enterprises photo by Tim Hynds Buy this Photo

FORT DODGE, Iowa — Those involved searched, but justifying words never came.

Everyone seemed to agree on one assessment — “weird.”

In a Class 4A Iowa state softball quarterfinal, Davenport West watched a seven-run lead become a tie game, which evolved into a three-run loss Friday.

Explanations were hard to come by — acceptance impossible.

Sioux City North held West scoreless for four innings and capped an insanely improbable comeback with a 13-10 win in a game that set numerous tournament records.

“It was the most bizarre game I’ve ever seen in 29 years of coaching,” West coach Steve Saladino said. “It started weird, it continued to be weird and it ended weird.”

After falling behind 2-0 in the top of the first inning, the Falcons (28-13) quickly turned six hits and several Sioux City North errors into a 9-2 lead through two innings.

West ace Jamie Davis struck out the side in the top of the third, and the mental celebration began. A semifinal matchup with Cedar Rapids Jefferson seemed minutes away.

But the game instead took hours, 2 hours, 17 minutes in fact, breaking the seven-year-old tournament record for longest regulation game by 4 minutes.

Suddenly, Davis couldn’t get out of the fourth inning and left with West clinging to a 9-5 edge.

Caitlin Nichol couldn’t connect with the strike zone either, and the Stars (33-9) scored seven runs in the frame to pull even.

“We stopped fighting,” West first baseman Sam Saladino said. “It’s hard to play in those types of games. We slowed way down.

“I think going into the third, we thought we had the game in the bag.”

After that, the Falcons’ hearts sank, as did their bats.

They chased North starter Erica Denney from the pitching circle in the second inning, but the Falcons were powerless against reliever Alex Zeimet.

During the final 51/3 innings, West totaled three base runners and on a hit and two North errors.

The Falcons tallied a run in the bottom of the seventh, but North’s 11 unanswered in the four previous innings were too much.

“I said to the first base umpire in the fifth inning, ‘Have you ever seen anything this ugly?’” Stars coach Kevin Dicus said. “He said, ‘I was just thinking the same thing.’

“And it was the ugliest game, but it was the prettiest win.”

North plays Jefferson at 9 a.m. today for a shot at the 4:30 p.m. championship game.

The Falcons had previously beaten the Stars 3-2 earlier in the year at the West Des Moines Valley Tournament.

But the hits, the walks and the errors weren’t nearly as abundant then.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game is a recurring theme throughout the three tournament records broken in the game.

It was North that played — and lost — the previous longest game. It was also North that played — and lost — the game in which the Class 4A single-inning runs record was set at six.

And the Stars also combined with West Des Moines Valley to score a 4A record 16 combined runs a year ago. They lost that one too.

In a nonsensical game Friday, apparently the Stars were due.

Andrew Petersen can be contacted at (563) 383-2288 or apetersen@qctimes.com.