Highlands’ historic season ends in state semifinals against unbeaten South Warren

Highlands came into Friday’s KHSAA state softball tournament semifinal with a monumental task at hand.

The first pitch reaffirmed it.

Taking on top five nationally ranked and undefeated South Warren, the Bluebirds offered little resistance to one of the best Kentucky high school softball teams ever assembled in a 10-0, five-inning loss.

Regardless of what transpired Friday, it was a historic season for the Bluebirds, reaching the state semifinals for the first time in program history.

But McLaine Hudson’s homerun on the first pitch of the game showed what Highlands was up against. Not only undefeated, but facing a roster with six Division I commits flexed its muscle all game long.

“That’s a great team,” Bluebirds coach Milt Horner said. “They’re not 44-0 for nothing.”

Three batters later, it was Layla Ogden’s turn, hitting a towering shot that passed over the foul pole in left to make it 2-0.

Hudson, the Gatorade Player of the Year in the state and almost surely to be named Miss Kentucky softball upon season’s end, hit another laser to dead center for her second home run of the game in the third to make it 3-0. The floodgates opened from there as the Lady Spartans tallied 10 hits with the offensive output coming from all over the place and spraying hits all over the field.

“Setting the tone early helped,” Spartans coach Kelly Reynolds said. “We went into this game determined, we had never scored runs in a semifinal game and to put up 10 was a great feeling.”

The loss puts an end to a storybook season for Highlands that not only continued to be the standard in Northern Kentucky, but put themselves on the map around the Commonwealth. They put together one of the toughest schedules in the state and got 35 wins to just seven losses out of it. Seniors Kaitlyn Dixon, Payton Brown, Cam Markus and Morgan Pompilio were playing in their fourth state tournament in the last five years.

“They’ve set the bar incredibly high,” Horner said. “You look back at Anna Greenwell, Kennedy Baioini, Carley Cramer, Michelle Barth, Bailey Markus. Those five girls all went on to play in college and they started raising the bar and these girls took it to another level.”

They end a five year run that not only came with five district titles and four region championships, but 144 wins as well.

“It means so much, 25 years ago when we started this if you told me we’d be here against the No. 2 team in the country in the Final Four, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Horner said. “These girls deserve every ounce of credit they get.”

The work will be cut out for the underclassmen, but players like Layla Zepf, Kate Class, Bailey Class, Allison Meyers and Katherine Heilman now have a standard to shoot for with valuable postseason experience already under their belt.

“I told the younger girls they’ve got a lot to live up to and they see how hard they have to work to get back here,” Horner said.

South Warren heads to Saturday’s championship to face the Bullitt East/George Rogers Clark winner, playing for their first state title in program history.

“They’re a great group of girls. They have so much determination, so much fight and they’re so hungry and not going to settle for anything less,” Reynolds said.

Saturday’s first pitch for the championship is 7 p.m.

SOUTH WARREN 10, HIGHLANDS 0 (5 innings)