WKU’s Larissa Franklin and Canada softball win Olympic bronze medal
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Former Western Kentucky softball star Larissa Franklin helped Canada win its first Olympic medal in softball.
The Canadians took the bronze with a 3-2 victory over Mexico on Tuesday.
The 28-year-old Franklin, the team’s starting center fielder, was 0-for-1 with a pair of sacrifice bunts in the win. In the team’s previous game, an 8-1 victory against Italy, she knocked in three runs with a double and a pair of sacrifice flies.
Franklin was the third Kentuckian to win a medal at the Tokyo Olympics, following University of Kentucky rifle team star Will Shaner (gold in 10-meter air rifle) and Paul Laurence Dunbar graduate Lee Kiefer (gold in women’s individual foil fencing). Mary Tucker, another UK rifle team star, made it four when she teamed with Lucas Kozeniesky to win silver in mixed team 10-meter air rifle.
Danielle Lawrie, the sister of former major leaguer Brett Lawrie, pitched 2 1/3 innings of scoreless, one-hit relief for Canada against Mexico. Lawrie (1-1), a veteran of Canada’s 2008 Olympic team and the 2009 and ’10 USA college player of the year at the University of Washington, relieved with runners at the corners in the fifth and retired Victoria Vidales on a groundout.
Lawrie struck out four, fanning former University of Kentucky star Brittany Cervantes to end it.
Kelsey Harshman broke a 2-2 tie in the fifth with a sacrifice fly for the Canadians.
In a game played in intermittent light rain, Emma Entzminger put Canada ahead with a two-run single in the second off Danielle O’Toole (0-2), but Mexico tied the score on RBI singles by Cervantes in the third off starter Sara Groenewegen and by Suzy Brookshire in the fifth against Jenna Caira.
No. 9 hitter Janet Leung beat out an infield single to shortstop leading off the bottom half of the fifth and Victoria Hayward beat out a bunt single. Franklin sacrificed, and Harshman flied to left as Leung scored standing up as the throw was cut off.
Franklin played her first three collegiate seasons at Purdue-Fort Wayne before transferring to WKU for her senior season (2015). She was an All-Conference USA First-Team selection after batting .417 with 70 hits, 39 runs, 22 RBI, 18 walks and 19 stolen bases.
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