Stephanie Speierman
Hammond HS
Maryland
Stephanie Speierman closed the book on a record-setting season with a state championship game performance destined for the record book.
The Hammond sophomore pitched the first perfect Maryland title game in 10 years -- and just the third in state history -- to lead the Golden Bears to a 4-0 victory over North East in the 2A final at the University of Maryland. The title is the first by a softball team from Howard County.
Speierman also struck out 19 Indians, tying former Calvert All-Met Megan Elliott's championship-game record. Those strikeouts boosted Speierman's Maryland single-season record to 425, a whopping 72 more than the previous mark set by Elliott in 2003.
And if that wasn't enough for a day's work, Speierman also drove in three of Hammond's runs.
"It's really just amazing," Speierman said of the day's accomplishments. "I'm still just processing it."
Speierman's play left much of the crowd -- and her opponents -- awestruck. She threw 62 of her 78 pitches for strikes, and struck out the first 10 batters of the game. Senior Amanda McCardell ended that streak with a fourth-inning bunt on an 0-1 pitch that was an easy put-out.
"Not in a really long time have I seen anything like this," said McCardell, who hit .430 during the season. "Speed, she hit her spots. She did everything a pitcher needs to do. . . . Every time you get up there, you say you're going to do something, and then you don't."
Hammond made the most of its opportunities. After Brittany Hazzard and Kristen Deegan reached in the top of the second on a walk and hit-by-pitch, respectively, Speierman hit a two-out rope to the right-field fence.
Hazzard and Deegan both scored on the triple, and that was plenty for Speierman, who did not allow a run in the postseason. After Katie Skojec scored on a wild pitch the following inning, Speierman drove in the last run in the fourth on a groundout.
Aside from McCardell's bunt, North East put only one other ball in play -- a fifth-inning groundout to junior second baseman Mandy Snyder. Speierman never threw more than two balls against any batter and threw first-pitch strikes to 17 of the 21 hitters.
"I could see the looks on their faces," Hammond freshman catcher Katie McCarthy said of North East's hitters, "I feel so privileged [to catch her]. We try to hit off her in practice. I know how hard it is."
And it might only get harder for Speierman's opponents.
"What you saw today, she's got more than that," Hammond Coach Rich Pond said. "You'll see it in spurts. When she needs it, she can get it. I don't even know if she knows that she can go that little extra.
"And she's only a sophomore. In two years, who knows where she's going to go?"
Hammond 4, North East 0Summer Travelers: Speierman is one of only three Bears who play on a summer travel team, according to Coach Rich Pond, whereas the majority of players in Anne Arundel or Southern Maryland play travel ball. Perfect At the Perfect Time: Five other perfect games have been pitched in the state tournament, including two in the final -- Glen Burnie's Jenny Parsons in 1989, and McDonough's Clarisa Crowell in 1997.
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