Highlights from Rachel's days in college include having a class down the hall from Chase Daniel and having NCAA wrestling champion Ben Askren hold the door open for her at Brady Commons, Mizzou's student center. She spent time covering Mizzou basketball, softball and baseball while working for the Columbia Missourian and is excited to return home to Southeast Missouri to cover local sports for semoball.com.
Rachel has covered three Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournaments for the Southeast Missourian and semoball.com, and she'll see you courtside again this year.
Why Pleasant Hope, the umpire and MSHSAA should be ashamed after Portageville softball loss
Several years back ESPN and other media outlets nearly replayed the story of the Central Washington softball team's sportsmanship into obnoxious oblivion.
The story, as most sports fans have heard, was that Western Oregon's Sara Tucholsky hit her first career home run in a game against Central Washington then promptly injured her knee running the bases.
The rules were simple, Tucholsky had to touch all the bases or the runs wouldn't count, and she couldn't get help from her teammates.
So Central Washington's Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace picked up Tucholsky, carried her around the bases and helped her touch each bag and then home plate.
Holtman said she made the offer because it's what she would have wanted someone to do for her.
The story drew national headlines, won Holtman and Wallace an ESPY and was praised all over as the right thing to do. Afterall, Tuchlosky had hit the home run. She was simply getting what she had earned.
I can only assume Pleasant Hope High School softball coach Kevin McVey thinks Holtman and Wallace made the wrong choice. After his actions on Friday in a Class 2 state semifinal, I'd guess he'd have ordered his players to stand by as Tucholsky laid on the ground in pain, celebrating internally how it might help his team win.
Pleasant Hope led 1-0 in the top of the seventh when Portageville's Savannah Lovins hit an undisputed two-run home run to give her team a 2-1 lead.
Lovins' teammate crossed the plate not long before her, and the Bulldogs gathered around home plate in a well-earned celebration. (You can see video of the play and read more here.)
I wasn't there, but the video of the play shows three things. First it shows a girl running into a group of teammates, with feet everywhere. Second, and more importantly, it shows the home plate umpire point toward home as if counting the first run. Third, it shows no Pleasant Hope player closer than the pitching rubber to the plate. Even the catcher is near the circle with her back to the play as the runs score.
Yet somehow, some Pleasant Hope players said they saw the first Portageville player miss the plate, and of course McVey had to challenge. How could any coach simply accept that his team had been bested fair and square and that his players would need to score again in the bottom half of the inning to keep their state championship hope alive? No, that can't be done when you have the opportunity to rob a high school athlete of a moment she not only earned but deserved in order to boost your own team.
In the most inexplicable and, in my view, incomprehensible twist of this entire story, somehow it was Keith Huether, the first base umpire -- THE FIRST BASE UMPIRE -- who eventually said the first Portageville runner did not touch home plate, taking both runs off the board because there were already two outs in the inning and robbing the Bulldogs of their lead. Apparently he believed he had a better view than the home plate umpire who was just a few feet away.
I hope he and McVey have trouble sleeping tonight and I hope a large asterisk is placed on whatever trophy McVey's team ends up with, but I doubt he has any regrets. He never would have made the appeal in the first place if he was capable of that kind of introspection.
If you think the coach was right to appeal, we'll just have to disagree. I've already communicated with multiple coaches who said they never would, but I know others -- including McVey -- don't see things the same way. Notre Dame softball coach Jeff Graviett said it best when he lamented on Twitter that two adults got in the way of what was a great game being played by great high school athletes. Shame on them.
This would be different, of course, if McVey had appealed a runner leaving a base early. In that case, Portageville would have gained an unfair advantage. That wasn't the case. Lovins hit the ball over the fence to give her team the lead, and Pleasant Hope still had three outs to even the score or win the game. Nothing more fair than that.
This would also be different if it was simply an incorrect decision on a call the umpire had to make. Umpires miss calls about whether a runner is safe or out, whether a pitch is a ball or strike and whether a ball is fair or foul all the time. It's unfortunate when that happens, but it's part of the game and those calls must -- must -- be made to the favor of one team no matter what. Huether was under no obligation here, no matter what he thought he saw.
The rules, of course, are in place for a reason, but to think that the Pleasant Hope players and coaches or the first base umpire -- THE FIRST BASE UMPIRE -- could be so sure that this rule that in no way impacted what happened on the field in this moment was broken that they saw fit to ruin a game, a moment and a memory forever is nothing short of classless.
Somehow, the Portageville team pulled itself together after the loss and defeated North Platte 3-1 in 11 innings later Friday, and for that the Bulldogs will have my eternal respect.
Portageville's star pitcher Taylor Tiffany, who allowed just one hit to Pleasant Hope, struck out 23 batters in the victory to break the single-season record for strikeouts in Missouri State High School Activities Association.
Apparently MSHSAA made an announcement congratulating Tiffany on her accomplishment during the game, which would be great if every MSHSAA official hadn't sat idly by as one of their umpires took away her chance at the accomplishment she likely wanted most this season -- a state championship.
I say all the time that wins and losses matter. Learning to win is a valuable life skill that lasts far beyond the high school fields and courts. Likewise, learning to deal with defeat is essential in life, although the losses take different forms through our lives after athletics.
But sports, at their best, are about more than final scores. They're about learning to compete, learning to work as a team for a greater good, a bigger goal and -- as MSHSAA loves to remind us -- they are about sportsmanship. And while we may play the game at different levels or for different reasons, we're bound by the idea that we work our hardest, play our best and then we have the guts to take our result and live with it.
While the MSHSAA record book will say that Pleasant Hope beat Portageville on Friday, that's not a result I'd want to have to live with, no matter which side I was on.
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