KALAMAZOO, MI - The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
It’s a sports cliché popularized in the 1960s by ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and one that played out in a three-second span at the 2019 MHSAA Division 4 softball state championship game.
Perhaps the most incredible finish to a state championship game in the history of high school softball, a walk-off triple play gave Unionville-Sebewaing its sixth and most memorable state title in program history back on June 15, 2019.
The thrilling finish made national headlines and earned a spot atop SportsCenter’s Top Plays segment, but as joyous as 3-1 win was for the Patriots, it was equally agonizing for a Kalamazoo Christian team that saw a seventh-inning rally abruptly end on a potential game-tying double up the middle.
“I mean, it was like a complete 180,” said K-Christian senior Zoe Hazelhoff, who earned all-state honors during her sophomore season in 2019. “It felt like we were in shock for a minute because it was just completely unexpected. It was one thing if she wouldn’t have got the hit, or whatever, but a triple play was definitely not on anybody’s mind.”
Current K-Christian softball coach Terry Reynolds, who coached the Comets to state runner-up finishes in 2014 and 2015 before joining the softball staff at Spring Arbor University for the 2019 campaign, watched the title game from the stands at Michigan State’s Secchia Stadium, before leaving in the fourth inning to attend a wedding.
It didn’t take long for him to see the final three outs on social media.
“Incredible is a good way to describe (the ending) because it just saps you,” he said. “You have something going, and you’re excited -- when I get runners on second and third, that’s when my blood pressure starts climbing -- but when you get an opportunity like that in the bottom of the seventh in a championship game, everybody’s in the game, everybody’s awake, everybody’s ready, then boom, gone, done. It just saps you.”
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Just as Unionville-Sebewaing’s joy of winning that unbelievable state title game has lived on long after the final pitch, it took K-Christian’s players a while to come to terms with the way their 2019 season ended.
“It was extremely hard,” Hazelhoff said. It really didn’t even sink in for a couple days, and then I kept getting texts from friends and family who saw it on SportsCenter, so yeah, it was it was hard to see it over and over again once it finally sunk in.”
“It definitely was very difficult to get over that,” added Reagan Broekhuizen, who was a freshman centerfielder on K-Christian’s 2019 team. “I think we had our end-of-season team party maybe a week or two after that, and it was really good to just get back together and talk about it. I remember we had a dunk tank, and the target was the (Unionville-Sebewaing) team, and it was just good to kind of let it all out.”
Kalamazoo Christian players walk off the field following the conclusion of the MHSAA softball Division 4 state championship game between Kalamazoo Christian and Unionville-Sebewaing at Secchia Stadium at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan on Saturday, June 15, 2019. Unionville-Sebewaing won the game by a final of 3-1.Emil Lippe | MLive.com
The Comets opened the 2020 season with four practices and a determination to settle some unfinished business at Secchia Stadium, but then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled Michigan’s spring high school sports season and put K-Christian’s plans on hold.
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“We were really excited,” Broekhuizen said of the 2020 season. “We obviously lost two very good and very talented girls in Sydney Duong and Jayme Koning, but it was only two, and we had a decent class coming in, and we still had our all-state junior pitcher (Hazelhoff).
“We were pumped, and we were ready to go, and obviously, it was a hit in the gut to learn that our season was getting canceled.”
Now 680 days later, the memories of that unexpected ending linger in the K-Christian dugout, but they’ve taken on a new tone.
First, they use it as a learning opportunity on the base paths, making sure they see the ball get through the infield at practice before straying too far from the bag, or risk drawing a triple play comment from one of the coaches.
“Now that the kids are two years older, they’re a little more focused, and they understand why that happened, but they don’t dwell on it,” Reynolds said. “We talked about this the other day about being smart on bases and want to make sure the ball gets through before we do anything.
“They want to go back; they’re hungry to go back. We talk championship because we want to go back. That’s where we belong is Secchia Stadium on June 19.”
Second, they’ve learned how to avoid letting one moment define them as a team.
“With how intense the game was, it was heartbreaking at first, but we, as a team, have chosen to recognize that it’s never just one play or one moment or one game that defines you when it comes to sports,” said Maegen Muldrum, who was a freshman catcher on the 2019 team. “Sports are made up of mistakes, and to be a good athlete and to succeed in sports, you have to recognize those mistakes and learn from them, rather than allowing them to discourage you. So, we’ve chosen to use us getting to that big of a stage and being able to play in that game as motivation to get back there and take home the trophy this time.”
Five players -- Hazelhoff, Meldrum, Broekhuizen, Faith Kline and Nyla de Jong -- remain from that championship-game roster, and Reynolds said he sees them, along with the varsity newcomers, possessing a determination to return to East Lansing and write a new chapter that might not make them forget about what happened on June 15, 2019, but will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief when thinking about it.
“The thing about coaching girls is that they don’t forget, but they get over it a lot quicker than boys do, and, yeah, they know that was a horrible thing, and they won’t forget how that felt, but it motivates them,” he said. “I can see it this year. It makes them think, ‘We’re going back. We’re going back, and we’re going to finish this thing this year,’ and that’s what Reagan said the other day. She goes, ‘We got to finish this.’
“They want to prove that we’re ready and that we’re going to be champions.”
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