Illiana Christian’s Olivia Daliege was grateful to be on the field at all on Thursday.
The sophomore second baseman had been sidelined since she suffered a sprained left ankle during a game on May 8.
“It’s a little tender, but it’s fine,” Daliege said. “We’re chillin’. I’m just happy to be out here again.
“I was just like, ‘I just want to be out there. I just want to play.’ I’m just so happy that it’s good enough where I can play.”
Illiana Christian coach Mark Porter had his doubts.
“I was kind of hesitant on whether or not I was going to have her in the starting lineup,” he said. “In fact, my lineup card was left blank in certain spots because I didn’t know how I was going to plug that in. So I got here and talked to the trainer and talked to her to see how she was doing.”
Daliege not only played but also delivered in the clutch during a Greater South Shore Conference showdown against visiting Griffith. She went 2-for-4 with two RBIs, including the go-ahead double in the fourth inning, as the Vikings rallied to defeat the Panthers 7-5, all but guaranteeing the two teams will share the conference title.
“I went to the doctor today just to make sure everything was OK, and it was just a sprain,” Daliege said. “So it was just batting through it. I have a wrap and a brace on my ankle. Not going to slow me down. Just going to keep going.”
Daliege helped Illiana Christian (14-6, 8-1) keep going after Griffith (16-2, 8-1), whose only previous loss this season came against Valparaiso on April 16, put up four runs in the second inning to open the scoring.
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Daliege singled to drive in the Vikings’ first run as they produced five in the third. Then, with the score tied, she doubled in the fourth to push Illiana Christian ahead.
“I feel like I had a good day,” Daliege said. “I was hunting the pitches that I wanted and then trying to execute and scoring the girls. Those runs obviously helped us.
“Coming up in those situations, I feel like it says a lot about your character and how you carry yourself, like if you have confidence or not.”
Porter praised Daliege’s “special” performance.
“She was probably playing at about 80%,” Porter said, and then he pointed at his heart. “But here, it was 150%. She dug deep in one of the biggest games of the season.
“She was struggling with it. It was nagging. But she came ready to play, and obviously we saw what happened. She came through. It’s tough to play this game at 100%, let alone 70% or 80%.”
But Daliege is making it look easy at times. She’s batting .517 with 11 RBIs and 18 runs scored this season.
That comes after an impressive freshman season during which Daliege started in center field and hit .403 with 21 RBIs and 17 runs scored.
“It was an adjustment last year, but I liked it,” she said. “It was a lot of fun. It was fun to be in charge of the outfield because center has priority. As a freshman starting in center, I was like, ‘Cool, this is fun.’”
These days, Illiana Christian sophomore shortstop Emmy Jansma doesn’t play too often without Daliege by her side.
“We’ve been playing together for a while, even in travel ball,” Jansma said. “We’ve always been friends. We’ve always been that middle infield duo, which is nice because we know each other and we know how each other plays. We know what each other is going to do. We have that person.”
Daliege and the Vikings, who will head to the Northwest Crossroads Conference next school year, will depart the GSSC with a title in each of their five seasons since becoming a member in 2021-22 if they beat Calumet on Wednesday. Griffith would clinch at least a share of its first GSSC title since 2018 with a win over Bishop Noll on Tuesday.
“They fight,” Porter said of the Panthers. “They’re a good group, so this is a big win for us, especially avenging the one we lost to them earlier in the season.
“This is a resilient group. We’ve been down several times this year where we fought back. This is a young group, and we find ways to get ourselves in some predicaments, but then we find ways to get out of them, and today was really one example. That’s a special quality because you’re never out of a game, regardless of what the score is, regardless of what mistakes might have happened.”
Daliege was still excited after the comeback win.
“It just feels so good to win this game,” she said. “It was just such a good game, and our energy was really high, and that helped us a lot. Other than that one inning, we did good. We pulled it back together.
“We have a lot of perseverance, and we kept feeding off of each other, everybody cheering each other on, being energetic, and doing good with that. Winning conference, we’re just very excited. Hopefully that will help our team and give us more confidence to win more games. It’s just so exciting.”