Hagerty softball wins state championship

As Campbell Downing blasted a double into the left field corner, cheers exploded from the Hagerty stands at Longwood’s Boombah Soldiers Creek Park Sports Complex and two runs scored. Half an inning later, that would prove the winning margin as freshman Bella Ortiz struck out the final batter to seal a 2-0 Hagerty state softball championship win over Western High School. 

For the second straight year, the Hagerty High School softball team stood on the final field, the last day of the softball season. Last year they walked away from a 6-5 loss. 

The game remained a scoreless pitchers’ duel through the middle of the sixth inning before, with two outs, Alina Gallaher was hit by a pitch, freshman Mattingly Klein nabbed a bloop single then Downing, the team’s sophomore catcher, cleared the bases. 

Gallaher had blasted a solo shot over the fence that would be the lone score in the Huskies 1-0 win over Lake Brantley in the quarterfinal to propel them to the final four.

The Huskies (27-4) blanked the Wildcats (24-6) in the final frame to seal it. Ortiz’s pitching held Western to only two hits in the game, which came in a tense top of the 6th inning, when the Wildcats threatened with two runners in scoring position before a grounder sent the game into the fateful bottom of the sixth.

The game was the fourth time the Huskies had taken a trip to the state championship since 2014, and their second state championship in that span. The team’s other state championship came in 2018, under coach David Stone, in a 1-0 victory over Orange Park’s Oakleaf High School. That year Hagerty was classified in a different division than Western, which also won the state championship, in a 7-0 blowout, that same year.

This isn’t the first time Hagerty and Western met in the softball final four. Last season they played each other in the semifinals, when Hagerty won in a dramatic 4-3 nailbiter.

The team is a young one, Hagerty athletic director Jay Getty said, but the few seniors who had felt the pain of coming close to a title last year felt redemption today. 

It was a fitting ending for Getty, and for the school’s seniors, Hagerty Principal Robert Frasca said.

“We graduated this morning, our seniors got to graduate, and then they win a state championship,” Frasca said after the game, as he watched players dump a Gatorade bucket on Hagerty Head Coach Tom Kreahling in left field. “What a cool moment.”