Felblinger pitches two shutout gems in tournament
Addison Felblinger gave up just five hits and struck out 14 in 14 innings of the OBC tournament. (Photo/Taylor McFee)
Senior Addison Felblinger fired a three-hit shutout and freshman Zhyra De La Cruz drove in three runs to lead St. Cloud to the 2026 Orange Belt Conference softball championship with a 7-0 win over rival Harmony on Monday night.
It was the second straight OBC title and sixth in the last 11 years for the Bulldogs, who went to 12-9 with the victory.
“We are finally starting to get healthy and this was probably our most complete performance of the year,” St. Cloud coach Ray Whobrey said. “Because of the emotions involved, it’s tough to beat rivals in back-to-back games.”
To reach the finals, St. Cloud also shut out rival Osceola in the semifinals last Friday. 6-0, thanks to Felblinger’s two-hit shutout. Like Friday, she was on point Monday. She allowed just three bloop hits, struck out seven and did not walk a batter. Only two balls were hit hard off her all night and centerfielder Grace Comiskey corralled both of them for outs.
“My curve ball was really working for me tonight,” the senior said. “We had some timely hits and my defense made plays behind me all night. We came in with a great game plan and were able to execute it.”
St. Cloud took the lead in the second when Jaz Santiago walked and scored two outs later on Shyenne Hawkins’ double in the right-center gap. The Bulldogs tacked on two more runs in the third on De La Cruz’s run-scoring triple and Felblinger’s two-out single.
St. Cloud scored two more on Madelis Reyes’ RBI triple and Comiskey’s RBI single in the fourth. De La Cruz capped the scoring with two-run single in the seventh.
Meanwhile, Felblinger got stronger as the game wore on. The two-time Osceola News Gazette Player of the Year retired 14 of the last 15 batters she faced, only hitting a batter in the fifth inning.
Comiskey finished the game with three hits, De La Cruz added two and seven of the nine starters hit safely.
It was a textbook display of using speed to set up timely hitting. Four of St. Cloud’s seven runs scored reached base by legging out infield hits; while six of the seven RBIs came on two-out hits.
“We’re a fast team and no question that speed helped us tonight,” Whobrey said. “As the regular season winds down, hopefully we will be able to build off of this performance and get ready for districts.”
In a third-place game, Osceola (8-9) got three RBI from Sam Edwards and two from Tenley Dawson to defeat Tohopekaliga (9-3), 7-2.
The district tournaments will be in two weeks. Ahead of that, St. Cloud closes the regular season at East River on Friday and home to Tohopekaliga Tuesday.
The Longhorns (7-8) are scheduled to host Tohopekaliga Thursday and close the regular season at Lake Brantley, Satellite and Viera on Friday, Monday and Wednesday.
Osceola hosts Melbourne (Thursday), South Lake (Friday) and Hagerty (Monday).
