Saturday, April 28th / Fredericktown ~ Apparently, I was wrong. The weather has NOT broken, and we find ourselves, in late April, back in winter mode again in central Ohio. With the high temperature reaching only 46 (yes Madison, I checked again) visiting Scioto scored a couple of late inning runs to beat the non-league Freddies’ squad by a final of 5-3, after waiting through a very chilly JV Game.
Scioto played their best defensive game in a couple of weeks, only committing three errors, none of which figured into the scoring. In fact, one of them turned into a highlight play of the game. An errant pick-off throw ended up in right field and the Freddie runner moved to third. But when she noticed the throw coming into second base she tried to score. Lauren Erickson took the throw from Imani McCullough and threw a seed to Makayla Jauregui who put a tag on the foot of the leaping Freddie runner who was trying to dive over Jauregui… Your routine 9-6-2 putout, just the way we drew it up on the chalkboard in practice on Friday night!
Scioto jumped on the board first in the second inning. Madison Heasley led off with a hard single up the middle, stole second and moved to 3rd on a sac bunt by Emily Dinan. Heasley scored when the Freddie third baseman inexplicably threw home with two outs trying to get her out at the plate; Heasley sliding in safely under the tag. The Irish added a pair of unearned runs in the 4th to pad their lead. Dinan drove a double down the left field line, and moved to third on a grounder to the back side. With 2 outs, the third baseman couldn’t cleanly field a groundball by Gretchen Baker who beat the late throw allowing Dinan to score. Baker took full advantage of the gift, promptly stealing second base, and scoring on Haley Gibson’s first hit of the year, a hard shot back up through the middle giving the Irish a 3-0 lead.
Fredericktown wouldn’t go easily, and they tied the game in the bottom of the 4th, with 3 very loud extra base hits. They strung together a double, and a pair of triples sandwiched around a walk, and could have done more damage but for stranding the go-ahead run at third base. Scioto scored what would prove to be the final 2 runs of the game in the 6th inning. Hayley Cole deposited a soft liner to left that feel in between the shortstop and left field. Lacey Henry took over for her on the bases. After a pair of strikeouts, Maddy Baughman laid down a clutch bunt down the third base line and legged out a single keeping the rally alive. Erickson then hit a gap shot to the left field fence scoring Henry from 2nd and Baughman all the way from 1st giving them the lead at 5-3.
Sarah Booth, who started the game on the rubber for the Irish, battled her way through the last 2 innings to pick up her 3rd win of the season. She left a runner in scoring position in both the 6th and 7th innings, slamming the door on both of the Freddie late inning rallies. She pitched a full 7 innings, spacing out 6 hits and 2 walks in her complete game outing, at one point retiring 10 batters in a row. Offensively, she was hit by two pitches and narrowly missed getting hit with a third pitch in her last at bat. Dinan was once again in command of the infield tallying 6 assists at 3rd base, Erickson had 5 assists of her own along with a putout. In addition to her 6 putouts in left field (including all 3 outs in the 3rd inning) Baughman carded her 8th multi-hit game of the year!
The Irish return home on Monday and rejoin league play, as they host the Jaguars of Hilliard Bradley. Scioto is seeking a little payback for the butt-whooping they received a few weeks ago. Game scheduled for 5:15.
Congrats to Coach Ott and her husband for completing the Cap City half-marathon in very respectable times of 2:14:20 & 2:11:45 respectively! Way to represent Brooke & Ethan!
Dublin Scioto 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 5 – 8 – 3
Fredericktown 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 – 6 – 2
