EAST LANSING, MI – With heartfelt embraces, sobs and tears overflowing, there’d be plenty of reason to believe Gaylord softball was on the wrong end of Saturday’s Division 2 state final. But you’d be wrong. It was just the euphoric feelings and tears of joy streaming down Blue Devil faces after surviving a dramatic, extra-inning 3-2 victory over Vicksburg, sealing Gaylord’s second consecutive state championship at Michigan State’s Secchia Stadium.
Top-ranked Gaylord (38-4) needed eight innings and all of Aubrey and Jayden Jones’ heroics to complete the journey to back-to-back state titles in a rematch of last year’s state final. “People probably think we lost, but these are tears of joy,” said Aubrey, an Oklahoma State commit. “It’s just been a really, really long road and no one has worked as hard as we have.
This was our ‘No Doubt Tour,’ and we wanted to leave our legacy here because we’ve been through it all. It’s our last time playing on the field together, so it was hard to keep that out our minds, but we achieved our goal ..
. “And now you can see the emotion afterwards of this being our last time together.” The joyous tears were nearly the opposite, though.
Down to their last strike and trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh inning and Maddison Diekman on first base, Vicksburg’s Emily Zemitans, on an 0-2 count, smacked a single to right field to keep the Bulldogs’ season alive. Yet, it did much more. Upon rounding first base, t.
