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Grand Rapids 6, North Branch 2

With the season on the line, the North Branch softball players knew they were going to have to pull out all the stops to extend their section experience.

As the 10th seed, North Branch was paired with seventh seeded Grand Rapids on Wednesday, May 20 for the right to play second-seeded St. Francis.

The Vikings turned to a young face for their starter. Eighth grader Emily Trunk took the mound as the starter against the experienced Thunderhawk lineup.

Throughout three innings, Trunk had kept their bats in check, but the Grand Rapids pitcher had a similar experience with the Vikings' bats, silencing them through the first half of the game.

In the fourth, however, the Vikings finally broke the scoreless tie when Kayla Merschdorf reach on a one-out single. Two batters later, Ashley King knocked her in with a two-out double in the gap.

They didn't enjoy the lead long. The Thunderhawks tied the game in a similar manner with a one-out single and a two-out triple in the bottom half of the fourth inning.

In the top of the fifth, the Vikings retook the lead when Trunk reached on an error and came around to score on a Kelci Lofboom double.

Again, though, the lead was short-lived. In the bottom of the fifth, Grand Rapids did the most serious damage of the game. Two errors early in the inning by the Vikings afforded the Thunderhawks too many chances, and they finally made Trunk and the Vikings pay for it. A parade of singles -- four of them -- brought a pair of Thunderhawks home, but the big hit came with two on and two out. The powerful Thunderhawk at the plate crushed a three-run homer over everybody's head and stretched the lead to 6-2. That's how the contest and the Vikings season would end.

North Branch scored twice on three hits and had three costly errors.

On the other side of the coin, Grand Rapids had six runs on nine hits, and they also had three errors, but North Branch was unable to capitalize on them the way the Thunderhawks did.

Trunk took the loss for Vikings, going all seven innings and striking out five while giving up six runs, with only two of them earned.

"I could not be more proud of this young team," Head Coach Ron Trunk said. "We've shown improvement in all phases of the game this year and I look forward to bigger and better things next year."

The tough part for Trunk and his charges will be saying goodbye to two of their own. Both shortstop Kayla Obitz and first baseman Angie Discher will be lost to graduation. "We'll say goodbye to tremendous leaders in Kayla and Angie," Trunk said somberly. "Kayla's senior season was plagued with injuries and she was not on the field as much as we would have wanted her to be this year. And Angie is a first-year varsity player who brought a great attitude to practice every day and was a pleasure to work with. They are both everything we want in players in our program; good students, good players and good people."

North Branch finished the season at 7-14 with a 4-10 mark in the North Suburban Conference, but as Trunk already alluded to, the future is a bright place for this young batch of girls.

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