PLANT CITY – There were many that doubted, but the Plant City High softball team let that fuel them, along with the past meetings with its opponent Wednesday.
Plant City (16-8) defeated perennial power Bartow 5-2 Wednesday at home in the 7A Region 11 quarterfinals. The win snapped a two-game region playoff losing streak to Bartow, last year’s state runner-up which came into the game ranked No. 8 in the state.
“Probably everyone here thought the underdog was Plant City,” said PCHS head coach Amanda Sawyer. “They (Bartow) usually put us out and are a great team, but I think our girls used that to prove that they can beat this team. Our story we talked about going into tonight was David versus Goliath.”
Sophomore Noelle Dietrich was stellar on the mound for the Lady Raiders Wednesday, pitching a complete game and giving up just two runs to the high-powered Bartow offense. The Lady Raiders took an early 2-0 lead in the first before Bartow (21-4) battled back to tie the game in the sixth.
“We weren’t shaken up that much, because we knew we could come back,” said Dietrich, who picked up her 16th win of the season Wednesday.
It was Dietrich that would bring in the winning runs, hitting a high fly ball to left to bring in Emily Register. Becca Sorensen and Kacie Booth then scored on back-to-back throwing errors by the Bartow defense, giving Plant City a 5-2 lead.
“Once we got ahead again, we weren’t letting anything by,” said Kristen Wyckoff, a University of South Florida commit that scored the first run of the game. “We got three up and three down like we wanted to and just put them away.”
Getting the chance to play at home was also an advantage for Plant City. After a FHSAA violation during last year’s playoffs, Bartow was not allowed a home playoff game. Still, Sawyer and her team were unsure which team would be the “home team” on the scoreboard, and have the advantage of batting in the bottom half of innings.
“We actually didn’t know until right before the start whether or not we were going to be the home team or if we were just hosting the game,” Sawyer said. “Hosting the game is a big deal in itself, but whenever I came back from the plate and I told them that we were the home team, that was just icing on the cake.”
Plant City will now advance to the region semifinals April 30 against the winner of Lake Region and East Bay, the team that knocked off Plant City 3-2 in the district championship. Plant City finished the regular season with a 10-0 district record.
“We’d like to play East Bay again and show them who’s really number one,” Wyckoff said.