Kaya Swanek picked the right time to drive the ball through the right side.
Holy Redeemer’s run to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Class AA softball title was again in jeopardy during the June 9 state semifinals in Allentown.
The Royals trailed St. Basil Academy, 2-0, when they got their first runners on base in the fourth inning. Swanek came to the plate with two on and two out, responsible for making sure Holy Redeemer did not waste its first scoring opportunity of the game.
“I’m normally a pull hitter,” Swanek, of Pittston, said. “I never hit to right field.
“Something came to me and I poked it into right field, those two runs scored and we tied it up.”
Swanek, the senior leader of the Royals offense as the clean-up hitter, lined the ball between first and second base.
“With the runners in scoring position, I knew I needed to hit it that way to get it out of the infield,” Swanek said. “My coach was like, ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you hit to right field ever.’”
While she may not have gone to the opposite field often, Swanek consistently belted out hits for the Royals, finishing her career on a 19-game hitting streak.
After outscoring opponents by more than nine runs per game as unbeaten Wyoming Valley Conference Division 3 champion, Holy Redeemer required several clutch offensive innings to get through a series of tight games on the way to the state championship.
Swanek was in the middle of most of those rallies.
In the three games prior to the St. Basil comeback, Holy Redeemer scored the winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning or later each time.
Swanek had a two-run double against Lakeland to rally the Royals from behind in a District 2 championship game that they eventually won, 6-5, in eight innings.
“I think the best team we played all year was Lakeland in the district final,” Swanek said.
When Holy Redeemer beat Wellsboro and Delone Catholic, 3-2, on runs in the bottom of the seventh in each of the first two rounds of the PIAA tournament, Swanek had hits both times. She scored the game-winning run against Wellsboro and drove in the winner on a bases-loaded hit against Delone Catholic.
The state final produced the largest margin of victory of the playoffs for the Holy Redeemer, but the Royals had to rally from behind for the fifth straight game. They fell behind, 5-2, after two innings on the way to a 10-5 win over Deer Lakes June 12 at Penn State University.
When Holy Redeemer scored five runs in the fourth inning to take a 9-5 lead, Swanek scored one of the runs. She also drove in the first two runs for the Royals in the first and scored in the last run in the fifth.
“It was my senior year and I wanted to go out with a bang,” Swanek said. “Any of the games we played could have been my last, so I wanted to make sure I did the best I could.”
Swanek recovered from an early injury to move into the starting lineup at third base as a freshman. She took over as pitcher for the next two seasons, including 2013 when Holy Redeemer went all the way to the state semifinals where it lost, 5-4, in 10 innings to eventual champion Brandywine Heights.
With less than half the lineup back, she was not expecting such a special senior season.
“I don’t think any of us really thought we were going to make it past districts,” Swanek said, “but we worked really hard and toward the middle of the season, we started to see how well we jelled and started to think we might have a chance.”
Swanek started out this season at second base, moved to third base then eventually became the team’s starting first baseman as part of the revamped lineup when fellow senior Katie Gushka went out with a knee injury. Wherever she played, she hit.
For the season, Swanek batted .449 with 24 runs and 25 RBI. She had nine doubles and led the team with three homers.
Swanek hopes to continue playing softball as a walk-on at Chestnut Hill, an NCAA Division II school near Philadelphia where she will study digital forensics.
