Familiarity can breed contempt, but Izzy Harrison didn’t seem too upset after she and her Franklin softball teammates faced off against Greenwood for the third time in four days.
Winning has a way of brightening the mood.
After the two rival squads split a pair of Mid-State Conference games earlier in the week, the Grizzly Cubs took the rubber match on Friday, riding a dominating pitching performance from Harrison to a 7-0 home win in the first round of the Johnson County tournament.
Franklin (13-8) will face Whiteland in a semifinal game this morning at Center Grove. The Warriors have won two of the three meetings between the teams this season.
Harrison, who struck out 11 Woodmen while allowing one hit and walking three, didn’t feel like facing the same team twice in a week made much of a difference. Greenwood co-coach Greg Norwood, on the other hand …
“Facing Izzy once is difficult enough,” he said. “Izzy is a phenomenal pitcher; that’s why she’s going to Kentucky.”
Franklin took a 2-0 lead in the first. Harrison led off with a single and later came around to score when Maddie Hedges reached on a two-base error. Hedges then came in on a partially successful double steal, crossing home while Erin Lee was caught in a rundown between first and second.
The top of the Grizzly Cub lineup came through again in the third. Harrison got things started with another base hit, stole second and scored on a one-out RBI single by Hedges. Franklin pushed the lead to 5-0 when Hedges and Corin Dammeier scampered home on back-to-back passed balls.
In the fifth, the home team tacked on two more runs. Courtesy runner Lily Miles crossed the plate on a passed ball, and Macy Hussung plated Lee with an RBI base hit.
Greenwood (6-15) had its best chance in the top of the third, when it loaded the bases on a walk, a hit batter and an error. But Harrison got Courtney Hankenhoff on a grounder to short to end the threat. The Woodmen got their first hit in the fourth when Taylor Dick led off with a single, but she wound up being erased on an inning-ending double play.
Harrison didn’t have much trouble from there, working around walks in the fifth and seventh and striking out five of the last six hitters she faced.
“She carried us defensively; we didn’t have to do too much,” Franklin coach Shelby Biehl said. “They backed her up pretty well on a couple of plays, and then we just hit well tonight.”
Dammeier and Harrison each had two of the Grizzly Cubs’ seven hits on the day.
Despite the loss, Norwood feels good about the direction his young Woodmen are headed in with the postseason looming.
“We don’t put up a lot of runs, but we’re playing the game better; we’re making less and less errors each week,” he said. “We’ve got some talent, and it’s starting to blossom.”
The Grizzly Cubs now move on to another very familiar foe in Whiteland, which split a pair of 3-1 battles on Franklin’s home field last month.
“Since we have played them, we know what to expect,” Harrison said, “but we’re going to come out and try our hardest, and hopefully it works out the way we want it to.”
