May 5, 2023

Muskogee Phoenix

State title for the Tigers

Breaks go Oktaha’s way in claiming Class 4A slow pitch championship

By Murray Evans Phoenix Correspondent

OKLAHOMA CITY — The breaks that always seemed to go against Oktaha when it played in the state slow pitch softball tournament finally went the Tigers’ way on Wednesday.

A seventh-inning rally for the ages in a quarterfinal against No. 6 Preston and a taut semifinal win over No. 2 Prague led to one final dramatic act for No. 3 Oktaha, which held on for an 11-10 win over No. 1 Pocola in the Class 4A title game at USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium.

The slow pitch softball title is the first for Oktaha (28-7), a program that long has been a state-tournament staple but never came home with the gold trophy — until Wednesday.

“We’ve been to the state tournament a lot,” Oktaha coach Kia Holmes said. “I’ve lost count how many times. We’ve been state runner-up a few times. I don’t even know how many times we’ve been beaten in the semis and we’ve been beat a whole lot in the quarters, so it’s nice to finally win it!”

Oktaha’s day started with a seven-run bottom-of-the-seventh rally to down Preston 9-8. The Tigers — not necessarily a home-run hitting team — then scored all their runs via the long ball in a 5-3 win over Prague.

As the Tigers faced Pocola — the defending champion and a team they’d gone 1-2 against during the regular season — Holmes and her team stuck to two strategies. First, they would allow the Indians’ top power hitters, Allyssa Parker and Kail Chitwood, only one at-bat. After both hit home runs in the first inning, Oktaha issued three straight intentional walks to both.

“Everybody else on their team is capable, obviously,” Holmes said. “They’re a really

MURRAY

The Oktaha Slow Pitch softball team poses with the championship banner and trophies after winning the Class 4A state title Wednesday at USA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.

good team. But we were going to make somebody else beat us. (Walking them) was deliberate.”

Second, Oktaha would try to avoid the temptation of keeping up with Pocola (34-4) by hitting home runs. The Tigers needed to be reminded of that philosophy after hitting six straight fly-ball outs to start the game. Once they adjusted, they finished with 17 hits over the last five innings.

“The few home runs that we’ve hit this year have been accidents,” Holmes said. “I had to get them to remember to get back to doing what we do best, which is not hit home runs.”

In the end, all 10 Oktaha starters had at least one hit and all but two of them drove in at least one run, with no player recording more than two RBIs. The station-to-station style paid off in the third inning as the Tigers mixed in five hits — all singles — with four errors by Pocola. The last of those run-scoring singles, by Brynn Surmont, put Oktaha up 5-3.

Pocola tied the game with two sacrifice flies in the third.

OSU lands reigning Big East Freshman of the Year

By Jon

STILLWATER — On the heels of a campaign that featured 20 wins, a fourth-place finish in the Big 12 and an NCAA Tournament win, the Oklahoma State women’s basketball program isn’t planning on rebuilding. Instead, the Cowgirls are electing to reload. For the second time in less than a year, Jacie Hoyt has dipped into the transfer portal and found a playmaking guard. A season ago, it was Naomie Alnatas, who spent three years with Hoyt during the coach’s five-year stint at Kansas City.

Now, Georgetown transfer Kennedy Fauntleroy shared Thursday via social media that she’s headed to Stillwater, and she’ll have three years of eligibility remaining.

The 5-foot-7 guard visited OSU on Monday, a source told News Press. Now, three days later, she’s a Cowgirl. Fauntleroy – the No. 12 transfer in ESPN’s portal rankings and third-best prospect still available – will join the Cowgirls’ backcourt after unanimously being named the Big East Freshman of the

Year in 2022-23. She averaged 10.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 2.4 steals this past season to help lead the Hoyas to the second round of the Big East tournament before falling to UConn.

A native of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Fauntleroy scored in double figures in 17 of 30 games (29 starts). She dropped a career-high 28 points during a win over Xavier in early December, and she came close to that mark with a pair of 24-point outings (at Villanova, at Marquette) and 25 against DePaul. As OSU’s fourth transfer this offseason, Fauntleroy will help fill a void left by the departures of Alnatas, who exhausted her eligibility, and Lexy Keys, who entered the portal and signed with Oklahoma.

But Hoyt and Co. don’t need Fauntleroy to be what anybody else previously was. They recruited her for the player that she is. And should Fauntleroy be the same hooper she was as a freshman, the Cowgirls have their point guard for the foreseeable future.

Jon Walker writes for the Stillwater News Press.

After Oktaha eased ahead 6-5 in the top of the fourth, the Indians went back up 8-6 in the bottom of the inning on a three-run homer by leadoff hitter Kylee Smith, who went 3-for-4 with two homers, a double, four RBIs and four runs scored.

Oktaha answered with another five-run inning in the fifth, recording seven hits (including doubles by Peyton Bryan, Kirsten Berry and Ryleigh Bacon). Cambree McCoy’s single to right-center scored Bacon to put the Tigers ahead 11-8. From there, it was a matter of hanging on. A solo homer by Smith in the sixth made it 11-9. Bryan, Oktaha’s right fielder, likely saved two runs from scoring with a nifty snocone catch of a fly ball by Kylie Merritt.

The Indians started the bottom of the seventh with a pair of singles and a fielders’ choice grounder by Dauslyn Brown scored Lety Parga to pull Pocola within 11-10. Ten-hole batter Presleigh Riggs flew out to center field for the second out.

That brought Smith to bat

again, representing the potential winning run. She hit another deep fly ball, but Bacon settled under it in center field and caught it for the final out.

“I thought, ‘Either they’re going to beat us or we’re going to win it right here,’” Holmes said. “She got under it a little and it worked out.”

It was the final break on a day the Tigers had many good ones. Preston (25-8) had Oktaha dead to rights heading into the bottom of the seventh in the quarterfinal with an 8-2 lead. But Ava Scott hit a tworun homer and Bryan followed with a three-run shot to pull the Tigers within 8-7. Berry then delivered a walk-off, tworun double to vanquish the Pirates.

“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and that was one of those games,” Holmes said.

Oktaha’s momentum from that scintillating win carried over into its semifinal against Prague (30-5). The Tigers led 2-0 after only two batters, as Scott walked and Hannah Focht homered down the leftfield line.

Oktaha shut down the Red Devils’ offense until the fourth, when Tessa Cooper led off with a single and eventually scored on a single by Kinsey Rice that pulled Prague within 2-1.

One-out singles by Scott and Focht preceded a three-run homer to center field by Peyton Bryan, extending Oktaha’s lead to 5-1. Those extra runs proved handy in the top of the sixth, when Prague’s Jadyn Hightower and Lexsey Trevizo smacked back-to-back two-out solo home runs over the centerfield fence.

Scott, playing shortstop, leapt to catch a line drive by Kailey Rich to end that threat, and the Red Devils went down in order in the seventh.

Class 3A

Dale 11, Haskell 4

The Haymakers saw their dream of a state championship fall by the wayside in the Class 3A quarterfinals, losing to Dale Wednesday at Integris Field in Oklahoma City.

The game began in favor of the Lady Haymakers as they scored twice in the bottom of the first on a sacrifice fly by Cheyanna Morgan scoring RiLee Westmoreland and a single by Shania Burkhalter that plated RayLin Morgan.

The 2-0 advantage lasted until the top of the third when the Pirates plated seven runs all via home runs. Dale added a run in the top of the fourth on a home run for an 8-2 lead. Haskell scored once in the fourth on a single by Mariah Arterberry plating Burkhalter and pushed another run across in the fifth on a home run by Lynzi Kelley, making the Lady Haymakers’ deficit 8-4, but that was as close as they would get as Dale (34-5) added a run in the sixth and two in the seventh.

Kelley led the way for Haskell going 3-for-4 with one run score and one run batted in. Westmoreland was 2-for-4 with a run scored and Arterberry was 2-for-3 with an RBI. Haskell finishes the season at 25-13.

— Ronn Rowland

Baffert won’t be at Derby 2nd year in a row

The Kentucky Derby is a tradition that’s never been canceled.

Postponed once by World War II and again by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, America’s greatest race has rolled on since 1875.

At Churchill Downs on Saturday, 20 horses will compete to wear the garland of red roses in the 149th edition. But the race will again be without the sport’s best known and hugely successful figure for nearly three decades.

Bob Baffert trained American Pharoah to the first Triple Crown sweep in 37 years in 2015. He repeated the feat with Justify in 2018. In all, the white-haired trainer has won 16 Triple Crown races. Yet Baffert is still serving a two-year suspension from Churchill Downs.

“I’ve just moved on,” the 70-year-old Hall of Fame trainer told The Associated Press recently, declining to elaborate.

His reverence for the Derby is obvious: “There’s no more exciting moment when you have a horse that has a chance to win the Derby,” he said, having officially won it a record-tying six times.

Baffert will sit out for a second straight year. Read on to find out why.

WHY IS BAFFERT STILL BANNED FROM THE DERBY?

Churchill Downs Inc. prohibited him from entering horses at any of its tracks for two years

after his 2021 Derby winner Medina Spirit failed a post-race drug test. The horse was later disqualified from that victory in a ruling handed down last year.

Medina Spirit tested positive for an anti-inflammatory medication. It’s considered a Class C drug, with a lesser potential to influence performance, but any level of detection on race day is a violation. Medina Spirit died after a workout in 2021.

Baffert already has served a 90-day suspension by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission because of medication violations involving his horses. The suspension caused him to miss all of the 2022 Triple Crown series.

DID BAFFERT CHALLENGE HIS PUNISHMENTS?

Yes, on several fronts.

He made multiple attempts in Kentucky to overturn the track’s ban and his suspension. He also was unsuccessful in suing Churchill Downs Inc. in federal court, with a judge denying his injunction.

Baffert was suspended for a year by the New York Racing Association for repeated medication violations, although none occurred in that state. That penalty expired in January.

Medina Spirit’s Derby disqualification remains on appeal.

WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENTS?

Last year, Baffert had purse earnings of $9.7 million, which ranked him 12th among trainers nationally according to Equibase.

That’s despite missing three months while serving his suspension.

“They’ve hurt my reputation,” Baffert testified in federal court in February. “My horses should’ve made much more money. I didn’t run for 90 days, and I had to let people go.”

In 2021, his stable earned $14.6 million. So far this year, it has earned $4 million.

Several owners have remained loyal to Baffert, entrusting their expensive horses to him in the hopes of winning Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup races. Horses he turned over to other trainers while suspended have come back to his barn.

But Medina Spirit’s failed drug test and Baffert’s punishments generated plenty of unflattering headlines for a sport desperate to appeal to a younger audience and to show it cares for its equine athletes.

WHAT ABOUT NEW ANTIDOPING RULES?

Horse racing’s new antidoping rules won’t take effect until May 22 — two days after the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown.

Under the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act that was created by the federal government nearly three years ago, antidoping and medication rules will be uniform nationwide. Penalties will be doled out to horses and trainers by HISA’s independent enforcement agency with the goal of speedier test results, rulings and appeals.