Grand Haven tops Traverse City Central in 10-inning quarterfinal upset

Grand Haven ended Traverse City Central’s season with a 5-1, 10-inning quarterfinal win at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, delivering the kind of postseason gut punch that sends one program on and sends another home. The Trojans, who had carried a senior-heavy roster and a season of firsts into the Division 1 tournament, saw their run stopped one game short of the state semifinals.

The decisive damage came in the 10th inning, when Grand Haven finally broke the game open and turned a tense quarterfinal into a season-ending defeat for Central. The win pushed Grand Haven into the Division 1 semifinals at Secchia Stadium on the Michigan State campus in East Lansing, where the state’s final four were scheduled for June 11 and 12. Grand Haven was set to meet Macomb Dakota at 10 a.m. June 11.

For Traverse City Central, the loss closed the book on a team that had made itself matter well beyond one afternoon in Mount Pleasant. Coach Julie Tiesworth was in her second year leading the Trojans, and the roster had been defined by senior leadership from Anna Tabaczka, Anika Peterson, Rachel Poortenga, Grace Cary and Piper Cavanaugh. Before the quarterfinal, Central had never finished first in the Big North Conference and had never won a regional softball trophy, making this postseason run a breakthrough for a program that had long been chasing those milestones.

Cavanaugh gave Central a chance to stay in every game it played. In an MHSAA feature published May 1, the Oregon commit was 11-0 on the season, with 114 strikeouts in 50 innings, just 10 hits allowed, five runs allowed and only one walk. That profile also noted she had thrown two perfect games and another no-hitter, numbers that explained why Central entered the quarterfinal with belief it could keep going.

Grace Cary, headed to Ohio State, was part of the senior core that helped carry the Trojans through a tournament run that gave the school community something to rally around. Even with the loss to Grand Haven, Central leaves behind a season that lifted the standard for a program still writing its postseason history and gave Traverse City one more team to remember for how far it pushed.