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The indomitable Myleigh Dobbins, a free-swinging attitude and an astute move by coach Donna Sunnycalb to change the order led the Spartans to the top of Class 6A softball

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By JIMMY WIGFIELD

OXFORD — Inches away from playoff death Tuesday evening, Saraland’s softball players resuscitated themselves with a line that had become their hosanna.

After that, defending state champion Helena didn’t have a prayer.

“The last thing we say after our prayer every day is ‘Keep swinging,’” Spartans coach Donna Sunnycalb said of the phrase taken from a book her team read entitled “The Twin Thieves,” which speaks of overcoming the fear of failure and judgment.

It was in the crucible of the Class 6A finals that Saraland kept swinging — “played free,” as Sunnycalb described it — and calmly unhitched itself from what might have otherwise been a flaming boxcar tumbling off the tracks.

First, right fielder Bryleigh Goff caught a bullet aimed at the Spartans’ forehead to save the first game, then state tournament MVP Myleigh Dobbins made the Huskies look as if they were swinging feathers, concluding a brilliant two-day pitching performance with a seven-hit shutout in the second game of a 3-1 and 5-0 sweep to win Saraland’s first softball Blue Map.

The Spartans (48-8-2) won three games out of the elimination bracket Tuesday after losing to Helena 6-3 on Monday at Choccolocco Park, the high temple of Alabama high school softball. Saraland began the day by beating No. 1-ranked Hartselle 9-2.

The Spartans captured the state championship in their eighth appearance in the tournament and after finishing as the runner-up last year.

“One of the hardest things to do is to get back to this game after being runner-up,” Sunnycalb said. “The one thing that we worried about was just not being afraid to fail and not worrying about the judgment of everybody else. We worried about just taking care of ourselves, so the kids played free.”

The indomitable Dobbins, who is going to play for the University of Mobile, finished her senior year with a 24-6 record and a 1.63 ERA and delivered one of the greatest performances from the circle in state tournament history.

The right-hander won all five of Saraland’s games in the tournament, allowing only 11 runs in 39 innings. In Tuesday’s three games, she reluctantly gave up three runs, struck out 23 and walked just two in 21.2 innings.

Dobbins wasn’t overpowering in the final but was precise and in command, using her curveball and changeup to frustrating effect. In the five games, she threw strikes on 70% of her pitches (384 of 545), including 52 of 69 in the last game. In the final three games, she let the leadoff batter reach base only seven of 22 times (two of those on errors), including just once in the winner-take-all game.

“Dobbins was a dawg today,” Sunnycalb said. “She probably threw like 40 innings in two days. She’s just got some nasty pitches. She wants the ball. It’s something special when the lights come on and the sun goes down, these girls act like a different beast.”

Dobbins said she could have kept pitching.

“The adrenaline was pumping,” she said. “I think I could have gone however many more we needed. I’ve been on the team for five years and this is the moment we’ve been working for so long after getting runner-up last year. We weren’t satisfied with that. We knew we could have gotten the Blue and we came up here with that mission to get the Blue from the very beginning.”

Dobbins said Sunnycalb asked her if she wanted the ball in the final game. Her reply: “Yes, I’m gonna finish this and we’re gonna win it.”

Dobbins had hoped to celebrate the state championship by jumping into the 33-acre lake at Choccolocco Park with her teammates but it’s forbidden for anything living except bream, bass and catfish.

The Huskies went down hook, line and sinker after Goff’s legendary catch in the bottom of the seventh inning of the first game. In a 1-1 tie, Helena had two runners on base with two outs when Hayden Trawick timed Dobbins perfectly and smashed a sinking line drive to right field which seemed certain to fall and give the Huskies the Blue Map. But Goff dove head-first, extended her glove and snared the ball inches off the ground to force extra innings. Otherwise, the ball could have rolled downhill all the way back to Saraland.

Goff said she had practiced such a catch all week.

“It was coming at me and I just knew that if I didn’t catch it, that was the game,” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got to lay it out on the line’ and God’s will, I caught it.”

Sunnycalb knew the risky play was the difference in winning the championship or another unsatisfying runner-up trophy.

“That was so huge,” she said. “We teach our players to be aggressive because we have speed in the outfield. Bryleigh did something that we do all the time. Some days she wins and some days she doesn’t. Most of the time she’s there. She came up clutch for us this time.”

Goff didn’t want to take another Red Map home.

“It’s very motivational,” she said. “It really makes you want to dig deeper than the rest of them.”

Sunnycalb astutely dug deep into her coaching encyclopedia, making the prescient decision to move Jadyn Byrd from No. 2 in the order to No. 9. Byrd responded in the final game by hammering a two-run homer to dead center field in the fourth inning and doubled in a run in the sixth.

Byrd was 0 of 11 with one RBI in the first three games at the No. 2 spot, then was 6 of 9 with seven RBIs batting at the bottom of the order in the last three games.

“There was less pressure for her and also adding power at the end of the lineup,” Sunnycalb said. “She didn’t care where she was in the lineup or the field.”

The Spartans finally broke through to a championship with quality pitching depth, as Dobbins and fellow senior Laken Bryan (19-2, 1.28 ERA) proved a formidable starting pair.

“Our pitching’s been great this year,” said Sunnycalb, whose is losing five seniors in Dobbins, Bryan, Byrd, Lillie Roberts and Mallory Brown.

Sunnycalb hopes to defend the state championship in 2027 with a team that has at least two years of experience in the finals.

“When we got here last year, they got super hungry,” she said. “They understood how special this is here. All season long, they knew what they had to do to get here. It wasn’t these days where you come to practice and you didn’t feel like doing anything. It was always let’s work harder, let’s do this, all the things that championship teams need to do.”

Byrd said hoisting the Blue Map after coming through the losers bracket was surreal.

“It didn’t feel real,” Byrd said. “It felt like we got rewarded.”

The softball state championship concluded a year in which Saraland also reached the state championship football game for the fourth straight season and the boys basketball team reached the state final four for the first time.

THE CHAMPIONSHIP RUN

Here is a recap of Saraland’s run to the Class 6A state softball championship in Oxford on May 18-19:

 

Saraland 5,

Oxford 3

On May 18, the No. 2-ranked Spartans opened the tournament by winning a marathon, scoring twice in the top of the 12^th inning on an error and Anna Claire Cole’s RBI fielder’s choice.

Myleigh Dobbins won the game in relief of starter Laken Bryan, allowing three hits in six scoreless innings.

Saraland tied it 1-1 in the fifth on Bryleigh Goff’s RBI single and led 3-1 in the sixth on Jadyn Byrd’s run-scoring fielder’s choice and Dobbins’ RBI single.

The Yellow Jackets, who took the Spartans to the brink despite committing six errors, tied it in the bottom of the sixth.

Dobbins, Mallory Brown and Lillie Roberts each had two hits. Bryan allowed three runs on four hits.

 

Saraland 3,

Spain Park 2

Leadoff batter Kyla Reed had three hits, including an RBI single in the top of the sixth that brought in what proved to be the winning run. Reed also singled in a run in the third.

The Spartans trailed 2-1 in the sixth before scoring on an error and Reed’s second run-scoring single.

Dobbins went the distance, allowing two unearned runs on three hits.

 

Helena 6,

Saraland 3

The Spartans dropped into the losers bracket, as Dobbins allowed four earned runs and 11 hits in 4.1 innings.

Cole homered in the first and finished with two hits and three RBIs but Saraland was held to just six hits by Lily Hensley and Carrington Schiefer. Tatum Cooper had three hits and four RBIs, including a two-run double and a solo homer for the No. 7-ranked Huskies.

 

Saraland 9,

Hartselle 2

Facing elimination, the Spartans broke the game open with a five-run sixth inning to knock off the No. 1-ranked Tigers on May 19.

Cole had three hits and three RBIs, including a fifth-inning homer.

The three batters at the bottom of the order — Byrd, Goff and E.C. Ready — combined for four of Saraland’s eight hits.

Dobbins held Hartselle to two runs on five hits and struck out 11 in another complete game.

Leading 4-2 in the sixth, Byrd, the No. 9 batter in the order, delivered a three-run double to break the game open and send Saraland into the championship round for a rematch with Helena.

 

Saraland 3,

Helena 1

The Huskies had beaten the Spartans earlier and Saraland proceeded to beat the defending state champions twice to win their own Blue Map.

The Spartans scored a couple of runs in the top of the eighth to win Game 1. Byrd, who had just cramped up in left field the inning before, tripled with two outs and scored on Reed’s single to break a 1-1 tie and an error on Cole’s hard grounder brought in another run.

Dobbins allowed a run on five hits in her third complete game of the tournament.

 

Saraland 5,

Helena 0

In the winner-take-all final, Byrd showed that coach Donna Sunnycalb’s decision to move her from No. 2 in the order to No. 9 paid off as she slammed a two-run homer to dead center in the fourth and doubled in a run in the sixth.

Byrd was 0 of 11 with one RBI in the first three games at the No. 2 spot, then was 6 of 9 with seven RBIs batting at the bottom of the order in the last three games.

Byrd’s homer came on a 1-2 count.

“It was middle out,” she said of the pitch off Hensley, who had beaten the Spartans earlier in the tournament. “I was just looking to hit through the ball. I had two strikes. I knew it was gone when it left the bat. It hit the perfect spot of the bat.”

Dobbins scattered seven hits in a shutout.

Saraland opened the scoring in the bottom of the second with perfectly executed small ball, as Jazlynn Skanes singled leading off, moved to second on Dobbins’ sacrifice bunt, stole third and came home on Brown’s squeeze bunt.

Byrd, Reed and Skanes each had two hits.