Daily Journal Athletes of the Week: Notre Dame-Belmont’s Allie Dorn, Claire Kimball and Hailey Truong

While left-hander Caroline Zerella pitched excellently through 18 innings of postseason work, the junior effectively executed the game plan to utilize NDB’s three rangy outfielders to the max. While totaling 57 outs through the tournament, Tigers pitchers struck out nine, while totaling 33 outs via the air.

“For the most part, when I see that ball off the bat, up in the air, I’m pretty confident we’re going to make a play on it,” Dykes said.

Senior center fielder Hailey Truong and junior corner outfielders Allie Dorn and Claire Kimball have been named Daily Journal Athletes of the Week for not only perfecting the Air Raid Defense through the three playoff wins, but for each turning in highlight-reel plays early in Saturday’s championship game to preserve a scoreless tie.

Truong has been a mainstay in center field at NDB for the last three years, and helped set the stage with three putouts in the first two innings. After making fairly routine catches on the first two outs of the game, the speedy center fielder kept Branham in check to start the second when cleanup hitter Sabrina Bugliacello smoked a deep liner to straightaway center. Truong used a quick first step and wicked closing speed to track it down just shy of the fence.

It was the most impressive of Truong’s six putouts on the day. Though, to ask her, it was just as routine as any of the others.

“For most of them, I didn’t think any of them were really highlight plays until I have to dive for the ball or catch something behind my head going full speed,” Truong said. “So, they all felt like normal plays for me.”

Dorn in left field wasn’t quite as confident making her only catch of the game in the third inning, though it was probably the play of the day. Sure, Dorn looked calm, cool and collected on the surface while sprinting straight back on a deep fly ball off the bat of Lily Jensen. The junior was still sprinting when she caught it just a few steps shy of the wall.

“That one scared me,” Dorn said. “I just had to work on keeping myself focused ... and just saw it coming for me, took my step back, ran for it and got it, thankfully.”

The junior’s dazzling ‘D’ recorded the final out of the third inning, capping a streak of nine up and nine down for Zerella. Talk about being in the right place at the right time, something Dorn has a knack for.

In her first year of varsity softball, it was something of a whim that inspired Dorn to try out for the team this year. With her focus being predominantly on soccer in years past, she was only finished with her junior season as NDB’s goalkeeper for two days before reporting to the softball diamond for one of the final days of tryouts.

Not only did she bat .333 while getting moved into the cleanup spot halfway through the season, Dorn also recorded a near perfect fielding percentage of .973, committing just one error in a regular-season win against Notre Dame-San Jose.

“We just really knew that Allie would be athletic,” Truong said. “But, to be honest, I didn’t really expect her to show out like she did this year. I’m just really impressed with her.”

With the up-spin of the fastballs from Zerella and relief pitcher Skylar Loo putting the ball in the air so frequently in the CCS playoffs, nearly every NDB position player made a putout on a fly out. First baseman Nicole Stancil caught four popups, second baseman Stella Hird caught two, shortstop Juliette Ramirez four, catcher Eliana Crespin one, and Bella Pavia — taking over in left when Dorn slid over to center, and Truong was pitching — tracked down a fly ball in left field late in the a 3-1 win over Watsonville in the quarterfinals.

No one, however, got more work than Kimball in right field. In a 14-2 win over the King’s Academy in the semifinals, she caught five fly balls, including for the first three outs of the game. She also turned in a highlight-reel play in the finals to end the first, tracking a deep fly from Kaitlyn Douglas straight back to the warning track.

So, it was fitting the junior right fielder made the final catch of the game on a shallow fly to right, one that seemed to hang in the air a few beats more than usual.

“It was definitely a very nerve-wracking experience when the ball got hit to me,” Kimball said. “I kind of froze at first because all the emotions went through me.”

Kimball’s smooth glide to the ball turned the high fly into a can of corn, though, setting off the Tigers’ first CCS championship celebration since 2009, and the first in the career of Dykes.

When Dykes arrived at NDB last year after three years running the program at Hillsdale, he had plenty of familiarity with the Tigers players, including Truong and Kimball, who he also coaches on the club circuit at Warrior Academy.

It was Dykes who introduced a regular fly-ball drill called “popup priority” to the NDB defense, where every player has to catch 10 flies in a row of varying difficulty. Every time one is missed, the entire team has to run sprints to the foul pole and back. The hard work has paid off, as it is one of the strongest team bonding elements, Kimball said.

“My freshman year, it was more each player was focused on their individual development and there wasn’t a lot of unity on the team, and a lot of people seemed not excited to go to practice every day,” Kimball said. “Then my sophomore year, when Nick came along, one of his main goals was to get us to act like a team, and feel like a team. And I think he executed that very well.”