Softball team goes one and one against Evansville
By Troy A. Bruzewski
Correspondent
By preventing Evansville of timely hits in their first game, the East Troy High School softball team earned a win. When Evansville was able to get those hits in the second game while the Trojans couldn’t, it got ugly.
In a home-and-home series last week, East Troy earned a win in the first game, April 15, 3-2. Miranda Dallas pitched a complete-game win for the Trojans, giving Evansville its first Rock Valley Conference loss of the season.
“Miranda pitched the whole game and did a nice job,” East Troy coach Greg Prince said. “The key was spacing hits out. Evansville is a pretty good hitting team, but we got the outs when it counted.”
Evansville scored first, getting a run in the top of the third, but East Troy responded with a pair of runs in the bottom of the inning. After holding the Blue Devils scoreless in the top of the fourth, Paige Kloth delivered the game-winning RBI.
“We had runners on first and second and Paige blasted one that just barely missed being a homerun,” Prince said. “She really squared-up on that one and it ended as the game-winning run.”
Evansville was able to close the gap in the sixth, scoring a run and making the score 3-2. The Blue Devils had the game-tying and game-winning runs on-base, but East Troy came through with one of its defensive stops.
“(Evansville) had runners at second and third with two outs,” Prince said. “We forced a groundout and that was a huge play.
“We played excellent on defense, with just one error and it helped with forcing Evansville to strand runners.”
Kloth and Anna Foley finished with two hits each for the Trojans. Dallas allowed seven hits and two earned runs, while striking out two.
When the teams met for the rematch, April 17, Evansville got those clutch hits and it was East Troy that was desperately seeking the key hit. The Trojans couldn’t provide the same punch they had in the game two days earlier and were shutout in a 10-0 loss.
“We couldn’t come-up with a hit when we needed one,” Prince said. “We got a couple of them on Tuesday, but in this game, we couldn’t get that extra hit.”
The Blue Devils had no issue with getting hits or scoring runs, bringing 10 runs across the plate in the first two innings. The Trojans had a chance to limit Evansville in the first inning, but errors kept the at-bat going for the Blue Devils.
“We could have been out of that inning giving up only a run,” Prince said. “But two errors by us and they scored five in the first.”
Evansville continued to score in the second, opening its 10-run lead. East Troy tried to respond and had runners in position to do so, but the key hits weren’t arriving. The Trojans left two runners on-base in the first second, fourth and fifth innings; while leaving one runner on in the third.
“We had plenty of hits and walks, but couldn’t get the big hits.”
Foley took the loss for East Troy, pitching the first two innings and allowing seven earned runs. The Trojans dropped to 2-4 in the Rock Valley Conference and 2-5 overall.
