COLFAX — Prairie City-Monroe earned the win it needed. The Mustangs claimed the Heart of Iowa title they desired. Then the players delivered the celebratory Gatorade bath on their coach they patiently waited for.
PCM won sole possession of the HOIC championship Monday night with a 5-3 victory over Colfax-Mingo.The Mustangs (20-7, 16-2) entered Monday one game ahead of Greene County, which finished HOIC play with a 15-3 mark after a win against Nevada Monday.
PCM head coach Whitney Plein lingered outside the team’s dugout after the game trying to avoid a soaked shirt. Mustang catcher Abbi Gilson made sure the first-year head coach wasn’t going home dry.
“Me and Jennafer [Uitermarkt] were saying we’re probably going to have to do that after we win,” Gilson said. “She (Plein) is pretty fast so I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to get her, but I circled around her and, yeah, we got her. It was pretty fun.
“It’s mostly just because we’re conference champs just by ourselves. The past couple years we’ve shared it and we did not want to share it with anyone.”
PCM made the most of a fifth-inning outburst after it appeared pitchers Racheal Freland and Amy Russell were going to make Monday miserable for hitters. Freland, the Mustangs’ starting pitcher, struck out six of the first nine batters she faced while Russell fanned 10 of the first 15 PCM batters.
That tone changed in the fifth when two base hits, a dropped ball at first base and triple altered the course of the game. Jayci Vos’ single to center gave PCM a 2-1 lead. Kayla Jennings then added to that on a hit to left field that scooted down the line past Brooke Nicholson and scored two more runs.
“We always have one inning where we go out and get it,” Freland said. “We’re contagious once one person starts hitting.”
Freland made that support stand as she retired the side in fifth and seventh innings. She gave up two runs in the sixth when Colfax-Mingo’s Jena Teed hit a sharp liner to right field that cut PCM’s lead to 4-3, but the junior never faltered from there.
Freland pitched all seven innings and posted a season-high 11 strikeouts. The left hander gave up only three hits, one being a solo home run by her counterpart Russell in the fourth inning that gave Colfax-Mingo a 1-0 lead.
“We knew from here on out that they’re going to be really close games and one or two runs mean everything. That one run was a big run,” Plein said, referring to Russell’s homer, “but we came back and put five more runs against it.
“We knew coming in it was going to be a battle and they stuck with it and made things happen like they always do,” Plein said of her team. “They’re a resilient bunch.”