MOODUS—History is a funny thing.
Some people are remembered forever; others are soon forgotten.
Lily Jahne of Hale-Ray High School is going to be somebody I will remember for a very long time.
After 40-years of covering high school sports, that is not something I normally say about pitcher who loses a softball game.
There again, Jahne is not a normal pitcher. And on Saturday afternoon, down the hill from Hale-Ray High, in this tiny little “ghost town” just a shot to the gap off the Connecticut River, a normal softball game did not transpire when the Ellington Knights came to town to play the Noises.
Let’s be honest.
“Noises”, to borrow from Hale-Ray’s mascot, were few and far between on this day, save for the slap of a ball hitting a catcher’s mitt and the repetitious echo of whiff after whiff of bats being swung through the air and striking nothing.
That was it. Whiff after whiff. Softball is a game of pings and dings, of ground balls and fly outs, but on this day, in this moment, it was all about arms: The right arm of Camryn Fisher and the left arm of Lily Jahne.
This day was about history.
Over the course of 14 innings, Fisher and Jahne opened the eyes of the Connecticut sports world when they combined to strike out 70 batters.
Fisher, the Appalachian State-bound senior for the Knights, fanned a state record 37 batters.
Jahne, who as a junior has already committed to St. John’s University, fired a 14-inning no-hitter and struck out 33.
Read that again: Jahne struck out 33, also breaking the previous state record, and basically threw back-to-back no-hitters in a single game.
And lost.
Yet as a stranger walked up to her and asked, “You up for talking?” do you want to know Lily Jahne did?
She smiled and said, “Sure.”
She had just lost a heart-breaking 1-0 defeat in 14 innings, and she greeted a total stranger with a smile and was willing to talk about what was undoubtedly the greatest and most heartbreaking athletic moment of her life.
Did she know what she and Fisher did on this magical afternoon? Seventy combined strikeouts?
She did not.
“Oh my gosh,” she replied after being told.
To watch Lily Jahne pitch is to become impressed with a kid whose hard work and love for the game is paying off.
To talk to Lily Jahne in the aftermath of such a defeat is to become a fan of somebody who just gets it.
She knew full well what the Noises did on Saturday, even if she couldn’t grasp what she had personally done against Fisher, who with apologies to every single other hurler who toes the rubber in Connecticut, is arguably the best pitcher in the state.
“I mean, I knew coming in, she was a great pitcher, and I was excited to compete against her,” Jahne said. “I feel like I’m just proud of me and my catcher (Faith Kalisz). We worked together, made sure that every at bat we were intense. We didn’t give up. Even in the 14th inning, we were still going, and that means a lot to me. I feel like it showed—especially to our team—what we’re capable of, but also myself, what I’m capable of. To just have a great competition like that against an amazing pitcher, I’m really, really proud of myself.”
Jahne should be proud of herself. The Noises certainly are proud of what their pitcher accomplished on Saturday.
“She found her grit,” said third-year Hale-Ray head coach Michelle Atkins, whose team slipped to 6-1 in defeat. “I thought that she was going to shut down a little bit and then she knew, ‘I have to keep going for my team.’ And she did. And she kept throwing hard the entire time. That’s hard to do in 14 innings.”
The players on the field will never understand this, but this was Ali-Frazier, going to toe-to-toe for 14 rounds—or in this case innings.
The pitches piled up. Three hundred and forty-nine overall.
Jahne threw 184 of them, 129 for strikes.
She faced 45 batters.
Not a single one got a hit. Not a single one.
Yes, the Knights escaped with the win. A walk, an error, a sacrifice bunt and a wild pitch—Jahne’s lone wild pitch over those 184 throws she fired to the plate—was the difference in the game.
But Jahne knew the moment was bigger than one bad pitch.
“Yeah, it’s disappointing, but honestly, we were saying in our huddle, it feels more like a win to us because I mean, as a small school competing against a top 10 team like that, it’s amazing,” Jahne said.
Hale-Ray, a Class S school, has 300 kids. Ellington, which played for the Class L state title last spring, has more than 750.
The Noises went toe-to-toe with the Knights for 14 innings.
“It’s incredible,” Jahne said. “I mean, we’ve improved so much every day in practice. We’ve just been working so hard, and I think it really shows what we’re capable of. So, even though we lost, it feels like a win to us still.”
Atkins knows what she has in her dugout this season, and she challenged her team this offseason by putting together a big-time schedule.
In addition to Ellington, the Noises are playing Middletown, Haddam-Killingworth, North Branford, Old Lyme (twice), Glastonbury and the two-time defending state Class S champs from Coventry.
“The beginning of this year, we really talked about raising the bar,” Atkins said. “That’s our motto for this year. So, we said we want the best teams in the state on our schedule, and that’s how we’re going to raise the bar. We took them to Florida and some of the best teams in the country were on that field. We couldn’t wait for this game.”
While Hale-Ray and the CT Charmers—Jahne’s travel team—knew who they had toeing the rubber, now so too does the rest of the state.
As I made the drive to Moodus on Saturday, I knew Hale-Ray had a good pitcher, but I couldn’t have told you her name if you stuck a $100 bill in front of me and said it was mine if I could “Name That Pitcher.”
As I drove away from the field, playing the game over and over again in my mind, I knew one thing.
I’ll never forget Lily Jahne again.
(From The Dugout is a regular column written by CT Softball Blog Publisher John Nash)
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