SEMINOLE — Twice this spring, Osceola had broken Seminole’s heart.
The first time stung. The second one — a seven-run district final comeback by the Warriors — should have buried the Warhawks for good.
Instead, it set the stage for the sweetest revenge a softball team can serve: a region championship, won in extra innings, against the rival that wouldn’t stop beating them.
Seminole rallied past Osceola 4-2 on May 13 to capture the Class 4A Region 3 title, ending a nine-game losing streak to the Warriors and punching the program’s first ticket to the final four.
“No one becomes a winner without losing, and no one becomes a champion without adversity,” Warhawks coach Ben Tubbs said. “We had four or five extra-inning games, close games — including two with Osceola — and that developed character in these kids. They had already been there, faced it all, and it wasn’t scary to them anymore.”
The rivalry has been building toward a night like this. The schools sit four miles apart and have played 18 times in the past six seasons. Seminole owned the early 2020s with five straight wins, including a region final berth. Then Osceola flipped it — nine in a row, two of them walk-offs this season, capped by the gut-punch district final that erased a seven-run Seminole lead.
For Osceola coach Brian Mont, the matchup carried its own history. A Seminole High graduate who coached the Warhawks for years as an assistant under mentor Mark DeRuzzo, Mont led Osceola to its first state final four last season.
“My first year of coaching (at Seminole) in 1997, we made it all the way to the region final,” Mont said. “We had to play Naples, and they were 33-0. We had the lead until the seventh inning, lost it in the eighth, and we didn’t make it. Now, 29 years later, we’ve come full circle.”
This time, the circle bent the other way.
The visiting Warhawks jumped to a 2-0 lead and refused to flinch when Osceola tied it in the fourth on sophomore Emma Maxwell’s two-out RBI single and a run-scoring error. Both teams traded zeros into extras, the kind of pressure that had broken Seminole twice already.
It didn’t break them a third time.
Sophomore Alexis Compton — 0-for-2 with a sacrifice bunt to her name — stepped in and forced the error that scored the go-ahead run. Then she lined a single to bring home classmate Kaydin Whitenton for insurance. Freshman Scarlett Eames retired the side in order. Game. Region champions. And, for the first time in program history, semifinalists.
“I knew I was doing pretty rough hitting-wise,” Compton said. “But Reagan (Cochran) told me I’ve got it, my coaches kept saying it, and I just believed in myself. Every single one of us had each other’s backs, so I knew I had to provide for my team.”
Cochran, another sophomore, set the tone early with a first-inning RBI single and added a base hit in the sixth while catching Eames. Sophomore Natalia Gipson chipped in two hits, a walk and a run.
For all the Warhawks’ offense, the night belonged to the kid in the circle. Eames worked around nine Osceola hits, surrendering nothing after the fourth. She stranded five runners in scoring position and retired the final six batters she faced.
The freshman-sophomore battery has been a seasonlong project.
“It’s the relationship you have with each other,” Cochran said. “We worked really hard throughout the season to trust each other — for her to trust the people behind her and, most importantly, herself.”
Eames said the math of the moment freed her up.
“We had nothing to lose, and they had everything to lose. That really brought our energy up,” she said. “We kept going and going, and I’m so proud of us.”
Now comes the hardest test yet: top-seeded Lake City Columbia, 27-3 and ranked sixth in the state by the FHSAA, on Thursday, May 21, in Longwood. The Tigers ride a 14-game winning streak and a lineup with three hitters batting better than .380.
Tubbs isn’t blinking.
“These kids have surprised everybody this year,” he said, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if they surprise them again.”
As for the rivalry that delivered the May 13 catharsis? It’s only getting started. Between the two rosters, just three senior starters are graduating. Fourteen are sophomores or younger.
The next chapter is already taking the field.
IF YOU GO
Class 4A state semifinals
Where: Boombah-Soldiers Creek Park, Longwood
When: 1 p.m. Thursday, May 21
Tickets: gofan.com; $14 advance, $17 day of game
No. 1 Lake City Columbia Tigers (27-3): 14-game win streak; ranked sixth overall by FHSAA
Key performers:
• Alannah Lord: .446, 5 HR, 35 RBIs, 41 runs
• Josie Raulerson: .430, 5 HR, 37 RBIs
• Emily Delgado: .388, 7 HR, 29 RBIs
• Ryleigh Stone: 12-1, 1.32 ERA, 90 1/3 IP, 110 Ks
• Kinley King: 11-2, 1.86 ERA, 1 perfect game, 64 IP, 54 Ks
No. 4 Seminole Warhawks (19-8): Three-game win streak; won six of last seven; ranked 139th overall by FHSAA
Key performers:
• Ellory Farmer: .424, 2 HR, 25 RBIs, 44 runs
• Reagan Cochran: .397, 23 RBIs
• Kaydin Whitenton: .378, 1 HR, 30 RBIs, 30 runs
• Grace Rapson: .356, 1 HR, 17 RBIs, 21 runs
• Natalia Gipson: .336, 1 HR, 22 RBIs, 31 runs, 19 SB
• Scarlett Eames: 16-7, 142 2/3 IP, 52 Ks