MOUNT VERNON – Ryan Pentz could barely keep it together.
The late-game comeback. The walk-off single in extra innings. The euphoria of surviving and advancing at this point in the season, when careers and lifelong dreams hang in the balance.
It was all a little bit much for Mount Vernon’s first-year head coach. So he took deep breaths, and paused, and tried to answer one simple question without bursting into tears:
What are your emotions after a game like this?
“My emotions?” asked Pentz, who moments earlier was leaping up and down as the winning run – his youngest daughter, Mollie – headed home from third base. He bit his lower lip, choked up a little, and grinned.
“I couldn’t be any happier.”
Mount Vernon used clutch late-game hitting and mistake-free defense to outlast Gahanna-Lincoln, 4-3, in a thrilling Division I district semifinal matchup Monday.
The Yellow Jackets (22-3), ranked fourth in the state, now have an opportunity to win a district title on their home field. They’ll host Delaware Hayes (19-3) on Wednesday at 5 p.m., with the winner advancing to regionals.
“It means a lot,” said Mollie Pentz, one of Mount Vernon’s 10 seniors this season. “We’re coming down to the end, and a lot of us are going on to college, to go and play softball … (but) our high school career, it just means a lot.
“I feel like we’re all in it – all in – and we’re just gonna fight as hard as we can to (keep going).”
That fight was evident on Monday, when Mount Vernon found itself in unfamiliar territory late.
The Yellow Jackets trailed 3-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning. There was a runner on first base and two outs when Mollie Pentz stepped to the plate.
“I was not wanting to lose,” said Pentz, noting the history between Mount Vernon and Gahanna in the tournament.
Gahanna beat Mount Vernon 13-10 in 2018, but the Yellow Jackets got revenge in 2019, winning 8-5 in the regional semifinals.
“You have that fight in you and you’re just like, ‘I can do it,'” she continued. “It’s just a mentality, I guess.”
Pentz dug deep and hammered a pitch to left field, scoring Rae Straight from first base and advancing to third herself on an errant throw home. She’d score the tying run moments later, trotting home after Gahanna catcher Nicole Waters missed wide on a throw back to third base.
“I thought her at-bat started to change this game. I thought her at-bat right there was what this team needed,” Ryan Pentz said.
“We were in our head a little bit, and we needed somebody to step up and do something. And that at-bat right there, she hit that ball to left field, is what I think finally sparked us and got our offense moving and believing.”
Mollie Pentz would provide another crucial spark in the bottom of the eighth inning, batting from the lead-off spot.
Down to her final strike, Pentz leaned in and protected the plate. She knocked an outside pitch off the left-field wall, racing to second base as the home crowd roared.
Gahanna pitcher Ella Esterby, visibly rattled, then walked Makaylia Schlosser and Brooke Radermacher, bringing senior Layne Cook to the plate with the bases loaded and no outs.
“I knew when Layne came up – I’ve coached Layne long enough, I think I’ve coached her since she’s been about 8 years old – the mindset was right,” Ryan Pentz said. “I knew that something big was coming from her here.”
Indeed, something big happened. Cook tapped a single into right field moments later, scoring Mollie Pentz from third base and ending the game in walk-off fashion.
“As I was getting the pitch, I knew it was outside, and I knew I’d have to wait back on it even more than any other pitch. And I already had two strikes on me, so I was kind of scared,” Cook recalled.
“As it came in, I knew it was slower than other pitches, so I pulled it into the gap. And then I see it drop, get to first, and everybody goes crazy … It’s great hearing that.”
Lost in the madness of Monday’s thrilling finish was the clutch play of Mount Vernon senior pitcher Emma Jones.
Jones surrendered three runs in the middle innings, including a solo home run from Esterby in the fifth, but was otherwise stellar. She recorded 14 strikeouts over eight innings, using a wide range of pitches to keep Gahanna batters guessing.
“She has a heart of a warrior. She was coming off that field with emotion, getting on her team about, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Let’s get this offense going.’ She has a heart of a warrior, and she wasn’t coming out of that circle tonight,” Ryan Pentz said of Jones.
“She’s been beat up and bruised up a little bit this year, but she keeps coming out every night. And I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, she puts that team on her back in that circle.”
Jones was able to pull herself out of several dangerous situations, including in the top of the seventh inning, when Gahanna had runners on first and second base with just one out. Jones proceeded to strike out JuJu Morris, then force Kirnan Bailey to pop out to end the inning.
“It would have been easy for her to get rattled,” Ryan Pentz said. “But she calmed herself right down, stuck to the course of the game plan, kept attacking hitters, and ultimately we didn’t give up anything else because she kept the right mindset in that circle.”
Mount Vernon hasn’t had many close games this season. Aside from the 1-0 win against Ashland on March 30, none had gone into extra innings before Monday.
But Pentz said he believed in his team. The senior-laden group has competed on big stages before, and that experience paid dividends late against Gahanna.
“I knew those girls were built for this,” Pentz said.
Now, Mount Vernon will shift its focus to Delaware Hayes. The Yellow Jackets have an opportunity to win their third district title in four seasons on Wednesday – this time, in front of their home fans.
Pentz said it’s all about taking things one pitch at a time. It’s how Mount Vernon accomplished its first goal of the season – winning a fourth straight Ohio Cardinal Conference title – and how it will need to play Wednesday if it hopes to accomplish its second.
“I talk about the banners out on the fence, and we do them one at a time. They’re left-to-right for a reason. We focus (on) one at a time,” Pentz said. “We accomplished goal No. 1. Goal No. 2 sits in the middle. And they’re focused on it; they want it. They want to put their name in the history books.”
The message heading into Wednesday is simple, Pentz said: Leave nothing in the tank.
“I’ve got 10 seniors. Leave it on the field, one last time,” Pentz said. “If they come out and do that, we’ll be ready.”
