Neuqua Valley home run for a good cause
A $100 donation to a good cause was never more dramatic.
Leigh Nebendahl's 3-run walk-off homer with two outs in the bottom of the seventh gave Neuqua Valley a 7-4 win over Downers Grove South under the lights in Naperville.
Talk about a perfect ending to "Strike Out Cancer" night, a fundraising event with all proceeds going to the American Cancer Society.
Neuqua coach Elaina Tanaka received an e-mail Thursday morning from Naperville-based business Owens and Associates that it would donate $100 for every homer hit by a Neuqua player.
That was Nebendahl, who hit the first pitch she saw for a high drive over the fence in right-center.
"It's the best feeling ever," Nebendahl said of her third homer of the season. "This game was so great to help out the American Cancer Society. Probably our best game all year."
A huge crowd, many decked out in dark blue and pink "Strike Out Cancer" T-shirts, turned out. The honorary first pitch was thrown out by 12-year-old Brooklynn Haas, a sixth-grader at Troy Middle School whose leukemia is in remission.
All told, an estimated $3,000 was raised toward the American Cancer Society from T-shirts, raffles, text messaged-donations and other gifts.
"It's amazing - I'm totally taken aback by this," Tanaka said. "At the beginning of the night, I was getting a little emotional because we put so much effort into this and put so much time to plan and organize with help from the parents, from the coaches, from the community. To see it come together the way it did, I'm so pleased and so happy and so grateful."
Downers Grove South (16-3) tied the game in equally dramatic fashion. Trailing 4-2 going into the seventh, the Mustangs got a Marissa Mersch leadoff double. Two outs later, cleanup hitter Katy LaCivita hit a line-drive laser that cleared the fence in center.
Emma Topps hit a 2-run homer in the fifth for Downers Grove South on a night when the winds were swirling.
"There's no winners and no losers - the winner is the American Cancer Society," said veteran Mustangs coach Ron Havelka, who even got into the evening's theme with light pink socks pulled up. "That's what this is all about. And yet it was a great game. These are the kinds of games you see in a regional and sectional, with that kind of intensity."
Neuqua (16-7), which won its sixth straight, scored single runs in the first three innings to grab a 3-0 lead. Nebendahl and Rebecca Lincoln both delivered run-scoring singles. Downers Grove South made 4 errors, the last one leading off the bottom of the seventh, and Neuqua scored on all of them.
"That's not something that we always do," Tanaka said. "I'm really proud of them that they capitalized on mistakes that were made."
Rachel Bannister's RBI double in her first at-bat of the season gave Neuqua a 4-2 lead in the fifth.
The win was doubly sweet for first-year coach Tanaka, who played second base for Havelka at Downers Grove South.
"It's a night I'll always remember," Tanaka said. "Very special."