Lake Central third baseman Kate Renschen hasn’t allowed being sidelined with a torn labrum in her right shoulder prevent her from flourishing as a sophomore.
She suffered the injury early in the fall, played through it for about a month and then had surgery in November.
“It’s an injury where you can play with it, but you can’t be at your best with it,” Renschen said. “I just waited on it, and after the travel fall season, I got surgery.
“It was really difficult mentally. It was a lot of physical therapy, and just having a throwing progression.”
Renschen was cleared two weeks before the start of Lake Central’s preseason practice. She was out for about four months, after she was told it could take five or six to recover.
“She worked her butt off to get back,” first-year Lake Central coach Brooke Baker-Runyon said.
Renschen added to her successful season in the Indians’ 6-1 win against visiting Crown Point in a Class 4A regional championship game in St. John on Tuesday.
She went 2-for-3 with a run-scoring double, a run scored and a stolen base. She increased her batting average to .506 with 28 RBIs and a team-high 20 stolen bases.
“She’s a dual threat,” Baker-Runyon said. “In the box, she’s a threat, and you get her on the bases, she makes things happen. She’s setting the standard when it comes to base running. She plays good defense, but offensively, she just makes things happen.”
Renschen hits second in front of Taylor Schafer and is alongside the sophomore shortstop in the field.
“God, that’s like my best friend,” Schafer said. “We’re really close. She always has my back on defense, and I have hers. Just playing the left side together, we bat back-to-back, we work so well together.
“We can trust each other with anything. She has great speed — really great speed. She lays her body out for the team.”
Renschen went just 1-for-6 in nine games last season as a freshman. But she hit the ground running in her first full season at the varsity level.
“It definitely took a lot of hard work over the summer and thinking about how I wanted to start and using that as motivation to get better,” she said. “I worked hard throughout preseason workouts to get here.”
Renschen also has drawn motivation from her sister Grace, who missed the better part of two seasons after two surgeries before excelling as a senior in 2021, when Lake Central reached the state championship game against Indianapolis Roncalli. Grace Renschen won the Mental Attitude Award and made the North All-Star Team, and she is a sophomore at St. Mary’s.
“She’s definitely a big inspiration for me,” Kate Renschen said. “Going through middle school, I came here and watched a lot of games. Seeing the energy, I wanted to be a part of it too.”
Renschen hopes to be part of a similar postseason run.
Lake Central (28-4-1), which was ranked No. 10 in the last state coaches poll, advances to play Fort Wayne Carroll (15-13) in the semifinals of the West Lafayette Harrison Semistate at noon Saturday.
The Indians topped Duneland Athletic Conference rival Crown Point (23-9) in both of the teams’ regular-season meetings before completing a sweep of the three games. They also had defeated the Bulldogs twice last season before losing the regional matchup.
“The seniors had some revenge to get from last year,” Baker-Runyon said. “So it’s nice for the seniors, for sure, but not only for the seniors, for everyone who came back from last year. It means a lot.”
Sophomore pitcher Sofia Calderaro allowed one run on five hits with six strikeouts and no walks to aid Lake Central’s efforts to reclaim the regional.
“It feels really good, especially getting revenge from last year,” Renschen said. “There definitely was a lot of pressure. We just had to make sure we didn’t make it special and played it like any other game.
“I’ve just stayed through the same routine this season, not made any game special, and just been behind my teammates. It definitely took a lot of hard work to get here. But I’m pleasantly surprised by how I’m performing this season.”