William Tennent’s Cinderella run ended by West Chester East in District 1-AAAA 2nd round
WEST GOSHEN — All Cinderella stories must eventually come to an end.
Unfortunately for the 23rd-seeded William Tennent Panthers, that day was Wednesday as they fell to No. 7 West Chester East 3-2 in the second round of the District 1-AAAA playoffs.
“They have a nice team but we just left some people out there early in the game and I just don’t think we handled things well.’ Tennent coach Biz Keeny said. “As well as we played Monday is about as poor as we played today.’
After starting the year 1-9, the Panthers rallied to finish 4-2 in their final six games, which was enough to sneak them into the playoffs as the lowest seed.
Once they were in, they pulled off a shocking first-round victory against 10th-seeded Council Rock North behind a complete game shutout from their ace, Kalisi Taufele.
“I thought Kalisi threw the heck out of the ball the last three weeks of the season,’ Keeny said.”I thought she threw it well enough to win it today too, it’s not like they knocked her all over the yard so you hope the young kids can have that experience and they come back ready to play.’
The Panthers had used timely hitting and good, solid defense as a vehicle to get hot late in the season, but some of that seemed to escape them in this contest.
Tennent committed five errors on the afternoon, two of which brought runs home, and ended up being the deciding factor in the game.
“That’s a bit disappointing,’ Keeny said. “We’ve been playing so well, throwing and fielding are such basic things; we got lost a little bit today. I’m not going to make any excuses; we just didn’t play well or play well enough to win that’s for sure.’
The only hard hit ball that Taufele gave up all afternoon was an RBI double to her pitching counterpart, Olivia Rogers, that was smoked to the gap and brought in the second run of the game for the Vikings.
“She hits the ball hard,’ West Chester East coach Chuck Lindsay said. “She’s got four home runs on the year and whether she hits in on the ground, or a line drive or a fly ball it’s just always hit hard so in every situation when you have her up with runners on you know it’s going to be hard for the defense to make a play.’
On the offensive end, Tennent managed to get a few base runners at clutch times in the game, but just couldn’t manufacture a base hit when they needed it most.
Rogers threw seven innings for her team and only allowed one earned run as she struck out five panther batters.
West Chester East’s ace looked in command all night and did just enough to keep Tennent off balance at crucial points.
“This game comes down to getting clutch hits and we just weren’t able to do a ton against this kid (Rogers),’ Keeny said “She throws it pretty well but it’s not something we haven’t seen all year, we’ve just got to do a better job. Our approaches we’re okay but not as good as they need to be when you get in a game like this.’
While the loss is disappointing, the fact remains Tennent did an amazing job rallying back from a slow start to not only make the District 1-AAAA playoffs, but to get a win on that stage as well.
“We only have two seniors,’ Keeny said. “We were all but out of it early on, but like I said we were able to play well at the right time and able to claw our way back.’
