By Rob Patrick
BENTONVILLE — In 2004, Lisa Stanfield’s first year as head coach of the Bryant Lady Hornets softball team, she led a team without a senior to the State Tournament where they lost in the first round to the rival Benton Lady Panthers, 4-0.Benton went on to win the Class AAAAA title.
In 2005, practically the same team got on a roll late and reached the State championship game, beating a strong Fayetteville team in the semifinals. In the title game, they came up against Benton again. Happy just to be there, the Lady Hornets fell to the Lady Panthers who’d been there and done that the year before.
In 2006, Bryant got back to the finals but emotional wins over Benton and Conway, another rival, in the quarterfinals and semifinals left them spent and Fayetteville took the title with a 4-0 win.
In 2007, Bryant won a whopping 30 games and figured to be on the way to another title shot before wet weather in Rogers forced the semifinal game against North Little Rock to be played at UCA in Conway. North Little Rock, which finished third behind the league champion Lady Hornets, pulled the upset and went on to meet Fayetteville in the finals where they lost. The Lady Bulldogs won their second straight championship.
In 2008, a strife-torn Lady Hornets team still found a way to reach the semifinals where they were defeated by the two-time defending champion Lady Bulldogs.
North Little Rock, as it happened, wound up denying Fayetteville a third title by winning the championship game, 1-0, in eight innings.
Now, among the freshman on the 2006 runner-up team, there were Christen Kirchner, Sarah Hart and Paige Turpin.
In 2009, they’re back.[more]
Now seniors, that trio will lead the Lady Hornets into Saturday’s championship game at Bogle Park on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville against either the upstart Cabot Lady Panthers or the defending State champion North Little Rock Lady Charging Wildcats.
“It’s very exciting,” Turpin said. “I want to finish it this time. We’ve been to the finals, semifinals and quarterfinals, so I think we need to win it this time.
“It’s awesome,” Hart stated. “We haven’t been since our freshman year and I was talking to the girls earlier about how it feels so good to go to the championship and that, this year, I have a feeling we’re going to win it all.”
“It’s exciting,” Kirchner agreed. “This is the best group of girls. We’re all going to go for it.”
So, did they feel like this might be possible when the season started, especially with five freshman in the starting lineup?
“Last year, I knew the girls were coming up and that we had a really good shot,” Kirchner said, “but I didn’t know they were this good, that they could all hit the ball.”
“We’ve been acting more like a team lately,” Hart observed. “We’ve been getting focused and our sticks are coming around. We’ve been hitting the ball, we’re on it.”
Turpin said, it’ll take more of what they’ve been doing to win the title game.
“We’ve got to play like we’ve played these last two games,” she said, referring to the 12-2 win over Springdale Har-Ber on Monday and the 8-0 win over Conway on Tuesday. “We’ve got to be into it mentally and staying with it the whole game and playing as a team.”
What do they remember about that trip to the finals as freshmen?
“It was really fun,” said Turpin, “but we had a lot of controversy with the team and it wasn’t as special as this will be because we’re all really close and we all get along. So it’ll be sweeter this time.”
“I just remember we beat Benton and we were excited we got to play Conway,” Kirchner recalled. “And we dominated Conway and I think we played at Cabot’s field. We were really loud that game, I remember that. Just like we were in this game. We cheered the whole time.”
“I remember we just didn’t have big enough sticks like we do this year,” Hart noted. “We weren’t on the ball. Now, we actually have a good chance because we know who we’re up against, North Little Rock or Cabot. We played them, we hit off both of their pitchers so I feel like we can do it this year.”
Kim Jobe
Great job, girls. We are proud for you. Mike, Kim, Kaleb and Korey Jobe