WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana — Lake Central junior right fielder Emma Wilkins left no doubt.
Even so, she wasn’t taking any chances.
“I knew,” Wilkins said. “I knew, but I didn’t want to assume, so I still ran. I still ran to first, and then I saw it was over, and I was like, ‘Let’s go.’”
Wilkins crushed a grand slam to left field on the first pitch of her at-bat in the third inning as the Indians rolled past Terre Haute North 9-2 in the Class 4A state championship game at Purdue’s Bittinger Stadium on Friday night.
“You could hear it,” Lake Central coach Yvette Tovar said. “I don’t know what it was, but you could hear it. It was great.
“She sprinted all four bases. Seriously, she was in a dead sprint all the way around, but she knew it, too, as soon as she got it.”
It was the sixth homer of the season for Wilkins, a St. Ambrose recruit whose father, Mike, is the first base coach for the top-ranked Indians (31-2). She batted seventh in a loaded lineup that finished the season with 74 home runs.
“Emma is amazing,” Tovar said. “The kid has so much patience, and she’s been locked and loaded since the middle of the season. She has quite a few home runs, too, but for her to have that breakout grand slam — she never had a grand slam.”
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Senior second baseman MaKayla Van Vossen, a DePaul recruit, was eager to celebrate with Wilkins.
“I’m so proud of her,” Van Vossen said. “All of us don’t try to go up there swinging for home runs, but as soon as she hit it, I instantly knew.
“Everybody came out of the dugout, and I was extremely proud of her. I gave her a hug right when she came in because that’s exciting.”
Wilkins helped Lake Central win its first state title since 2004 and fourth overall in its first appearance in the championship game since 2021.
“I’m so grateful,” Wilkins said. “This team, we’ve come so far, and it’s a group effort.
“We’ve come so far, especially with our culture. It just means a lot.”
Van Vossen set the tone against No. 10 Terre Haute North (30-2) when she led off the first inning with her sixth homer of the season.
“Honestly, I’ve been in a slump recently, and when I was going up to bat, I was very nervous because it’s a state game,” Van Vossen said. “It’s your last one, for me at least, and I just went out there, and I was like, ‘This is it. I need to put everything I have out on this field.’
“I’m really in shock. It’s really exciting. It’s taken us four years to get to this, and I knew from the beginning of the season that this was the team that was going to do it, and here we are today, and I’ve been crying the whole time. We’re going to celebrate now, and that’s all you can really do.”
Senior third baseman Tegan Tripp, a Virginia Tech recruit who batted cleanup, then lined a home run to center to lead off the fourth. That first-pitch homer was her 12th of the season, and she finished 3-for-4.
Junior catcher Madi Wainwright, an Indiana recruit, added a run-scoring single, and junior center fielder Piper Urbanski hit a sacrifice fly.
Junior pitcher Maddie Such, a Kentucky recruit, contained Terre Haute North, allowing one earned run on six hits and one walk and striking out seven. She also contributed a run-scoring single.
Tovar, a 2003 Lake Central graduate, added another state title to her resume. She started in right field on both the state championship team in 2002 and the runner-up team the following season.
“It feels no different,” Tovar said. “It feels exactly the same. It feels like I’ve been transported back to 2002 when I won this. It feels good. It feels amazing.
“For the five seniors, I wanted to see their faces. They’ve been looking for this for four years. But it didn’t take one player for us to get here. It took every individual. I just wanted to see their faces. I was a player, and I didn’t know what my face looked like, so I wanted to see their faces. That means more than anything could for me.”