Brittany Finney’s (Near) Perfect Season (5/31)

Brittany Finney’s (Near) Perfect Season (5/31)

May 31, 2015 by Brentt Eads
Brittany Finney’s (Near) Perfect Season (5/31)

It doesn’t get much better—or more dominant—at the high school level than the season that Brittany Finney of Bishop Carroll High of Wichita, Kan. turned in this year.

Brittany Finney (7 ) and Bishop Carroll won the school's 5th straight 5A Kansas title. Photo by Bo Rader of the Wichita Eagle
Brittany Finney (7 ) and Bishop Carroll won the school’s 5th straight 5A Kansas title. Photo by Bo Rader of the Wichita Eagle

Friday afternoon, the senior headed to the Univ. of Oklahoma capped off an All-American season by pitching the Golden Eagles to a fifth straight state championship and, appropriately, she won the 5A State title game by pitching a no-hitter in Carroll’s 10-0 win over Blue Valley West.

In the latest FAB 50 high school rankings, Carroll is ranked No. 7 in the nation and can only go up as teams still playing rated higher could lose in playoffs this week.

In her high school career, Finney played on teams that went 90-6 and she herself compiled a 56-4 pitching record.

Not perfect, but pretty darn close, although the last two years have been perfect for Carroll, which went 50-0 after Finney transferred in prior to the start of the 2014 campaign.

Last year, she split pitching duties with Jessi Haffner, now at Oklahoma State, but this year it was all Brittany in the circle and she showed why she is one of the elite pitchers in the country as she gave up only three earned runs all season while going 14-0 with a 0.30 ERA and 11 shut outs, six no-hitters and two perfect games.

“I go into every game expecting us to win,” Finney told the Wichita Eagle after Friday’s game. “I don’t expect anything less. We just had to push through every single game that we had. Every game, it was just a new opportunity to show everybody what we’ve got. Each win was just that much more important.”

Brittany in action during her title game no-hitter.  Photo by the Wichita Eagle.
Brittany in action during her title game no-hitter. Photo by the Wichita Eagle.

To cap off the playoffs, the standout player—who plays for the So Cal-based Explosion club team which finished tied for 7th at last year’s PGF 18U Premier Nationals—pitched every inning for the Golden Eagles in the three playoff championship games and Finney threw 24 strikeouts in 20 innings while allowing only one earned run on seven hits.

The senior also homered in each of those games and totaled 17 home runs for the season, which gave her 38 for her career—a Kansas high school state record.

Finney also holds the state marks for career RBI (140), hits in a game (5) and home runs in a game (3).

The soon-to-be Sooner hit a remarkable .774 this year with an on-base percentage of .846 and an astronomical slugging percentage of 1.903.

While Finney was shutting teams down in the playoffs, the Golden Eagles’ offense made sure she got plenty of run support.

Carroll beat Shawnee Heights in the semi’s 7-2 and in the final game put three runs across in the fifth inning, including a Finney solo shot, and then plated five more in the sixth inning to shut the game down early and give the powerhouse team from Wichita another state title.

According to her father, Gary, Brittany will be starting at OU on June 8 and he and the family will be moving to Wyoming this week as part of a job change.

“It’s a tough time,” the star pitcher’s father states, “but I guess she needs to become the great person I know she will be. Maybe softball has helped her to get there.”