Harlem's refusal to install fences shouldn't have dictated outcome

MACHESNEY PARK -- OK, so it was the same for both sides.

And this is not to take away for one minute the charge Crystal Lake South's Gina DeFano put into the pitch from South Elgin's Rebecca French to lead off the bottom of the seventh inning and win the Class 4A Machesney Park Harlem sectional championship game 1-0 Saturday at the Harlem Community Center.

No, this is not to diminish the accomplishment of DeFano, Jessica Gable and the rest of the Gators one bit. They won the game fair and square and their place in Monday's Elite Eight supersectional game at NIU against Barrington is not in question.

What is in question is a host site of an IHSA state tournament series softball game refusing to entertain the idea of placing a 200 or 225-foot portable fence on a slow pitch field that has fences 300 feet from home plate.

After schools have played their entire season on regulation fastpitch fields, wouldn't it only be fair to play a sectional tournament on a field of like dimension? Schools statewide rent portable fences for high school tournaments if they need to, yet Harlem chose not to. And off-campus facilities are generally accommodating to the needs of high schools using their fields. I know the Rockford area is and I know that in the last 4-5 years, I've never been to a postseason high school game at the Elgin Sports Complex where there weren't portable fences.

It just seemed like a tainted ending to a great game Saturday when DeFano's line drive -- not a mammoth fly ball, a line drive -- split the right-center field gap and rolled to that 300 foot fence while DeFano circled the bases and the speedy South Elgin outfielders -- Caitlin Stredde and Katelyn Stonecipher -- chased the ball down.

I thought it was 1980 all over again, when the majority of high school softball facilities had no fences. Now, of course, the large majority do and to see a sectional championship won by any team on a field like the one at Harlem Saturday is, in my book, a step back for the game.

You can't win a state championship at Eastside Centre in East Peoria the way CL South won its sectional title Saturday, and you shouldn't be allowed to win any postseason championship on any field other than a regulation fastpitch field.

"I think it's crap and it changes the entire game," said South Elgin coach Jason Schaal, who acknowledged as the leadoff hitter in the inning it's possible DeFano would have scored anyway if the hit had been just a double or triple as it should have been.

"To play a sectional game on a field that is nothing close to what a state tournament field is going to be like is ridiculous. On any other field it's a double, maybe a triple. But this is where the IHSA put us and we had to deal with it. I'll be at the state tournament and I'll be bringing it up at the roundtable of coaches discussions."

For the record, the online version of the IHSA's terms and conditions for the state girls softball tournament series does not address field dimensions.

It should and I hope the softball advisory committee puts this issue front and center.

"It's a selection process but I have to believe there are fields better than this that are closer to state tournament standards," Schaal said. "I'm not taking anything away from (DeFano), and Gable pitched a heck of a game, but when you play 30-35 games on 200-225 feet fields playing a state tournament series game on a 300-foot field just doesn't seem right. But she hit the ball in the right spot so give her credit."

To verify Schaal's claim about other facilities, there are at least eight schools in the Harlem sectional complex that I know have regulation fences.

After his team won the Jacobs regional last weekend, South coach Scott Busam called Harlem officials to ask about the fence situation, as his team had played at HCC earlier in the season.

"The answer I got back was 'no there won't be portable fences,' and the answer was quite terse," Busam said.

Actually, the fields at HCC are quite nice, as is the facility itself. The biggest beef here has to be with the IHSA for not mandating regulation fences in the state tournament series, and with Harlem High School for not doing what every other school I've ever visited does when it hosts a state tournament series event and doesn't have fences -- go rent some. Oh, and get a public address system and announcer like every other host site does by the sectional round.

I also have to raise a potential Title IX -- remember Title IX??? -- issue with Harlem as well. The massive school campus on Alpine Road has two beautiful baseball fields yet they send the softball teams to an off-campus facility without regulation fastpitch fields. There's something wrong with that picture.

Also for the record, by the time the hoopla of Saturday's game wore down there was no one from Harlem around to answer the question of why there were no portable fences installed.

So, congratulations to the Gators. The field was the same for both sides, Gable did pitch a fantastic game against a great-hitting team, DeFano did hit the ball on the nose, and all the jubilation of winning a sectional championship belongs to the Gators.

But this was too good of a game to be remembered for the way it ended, a way no high school state tournament series game should ever be allowed to end.

And for that, the IHSA and Harlem High School should be ashamed.