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Kyle Parmley
Chelsea Softball
Mallory Bradford hit the game-winning home run against rival Oxford High School to lift the Hornets to the Class 6A state championship.
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Kyle Parmley
Chelsea Softball
Alex Smithson finished her senior season with a .455 average, reaching base in nearly half her at-bats.
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Kyle Parmley
Chelsea Softball
Sarah Cespedes, above, was dominant in the pitching circle, compiling a 22-8 record and 1.68 ERA.
The Chelsea softball team ran the table through the Class 6A North Central Regional and the state tournament, winning the last seven games of the season and bringing home the school’s second state championship.
The biggest hit of the year came in the final inning of the last game. Locked in a 1-1 tie in the seventh inning against Area 10 rival Oxford — in the teams’ seventh meeting against each other — first-year head coach Heather Lee gave her team a message.
“I told them, ‘We’re not playing extra innings. We will not go into the eighth inning with this team. End it now. If you score a run, they’re done. They’re not going to be able to come back and answer,’” she said.
Allie Miller reached on a single to bring up Mallory Bradford, setting the drama into motion.
“I knew that Allie started off the inning very well with a base hit, and I said, ‘OK, this is our inning to score. This is the last inning; we’re going to do something right here to win this game,’” Bradford said.
Bradford took that idea into her own hands, launching a fly ball deep to left field. The ball cleared the fence for a home run and sent the Lady Hornets into a frenzy, only Bradford didn’t notice.
“It’s a pop up; the left fielder’s about to catch it, so I’m going to run to second base, just run it out,” she said.
With Miller on first base and only going about halfway in case the fly ball was caught, Bradford nearly flew past Miller on the base paths on her way to second.
“I was screaming so loud, ‘Do not pass her!’” first base coach Rebecca Roper said. “I wanted to run out on the field and just hold her.”
If Bradford would have passed Miller, both runners would have been ruled out, and neither would have scored.
“I did almost pass Allie, and luckily she turned around and told me to slow down,” Bradford said.
The Lady Hornets went on to win the game and the title in the bottom half of the inning. It was the perfect cap to a career for senior Bradford. “Absolutely the greatest moment of my life,” she said.
However, she almost did not get the chance to launch the game-winning homer. Lee gave Bradford the bunt sign, in hopes that a sacrifice bunt would move Miller to second base.
She squared to bunt, but pulled the bat back. Ball 1.
After that pitch, Lee left the decision to Bradford on whether to bunt or swing away. The count reached three balls and one strike. Lee said she mulled it over.
“I thought about giving her the take, and I thought, ‘You know what, no. She’s good. We’re good to go,’ so I gave her [the sign to] hit the ball,” Lee said.
And on that 3-1 pitch, she hit the ball.
Bradford was one of many the Lady Hornets could rely on to produce up and down the lineup all season. Miller led the team with a .486 batting average. Senior Alex Smithson also hit well all season, finishing her final campaign hitting .455.
Chelsea also would not have reached its peak without the dominance in the pitching circle from Sarah Cespedes, who compiled a record of 22-8, with a 1.68 ERA. Camryn Smith also started 10 games, going 3-2.
Lexi Preisendorfer tied Miller and Smithson for the team lead with three homers on the season, but had the most runs batted in at 32.
Before the season began, Lee said she heard she had a team that could match up with the best of them, but she needed to see it for herself.
“Coming into this year, after our first few practices, and hearing what I had heard from teachers and other coaches about the talent that existed within our program, for me, you always take that with a grain of salt,” she said. “After our first few practices, I knew there was talent. There was no doubt about it.”
The team reached the state tournament in 2015 as well, but it struggled once it got there. The talent was there, but it became a matter of holding it together between the ears.
“It wasn’t necessarily coaching them to their talent side, but more to the mental side,” Lee said.
Chelsea’s seniors were eighth-graders when the school won its first softball title, and Smithson said she couldn’t be happier to conclude her career on a high note.
“It is absolutely unbelievable. It doesn’t feel real. I don’t think it’s settled in yet,” she said.
