South Upsets North
J. C. Tilton
The North and South baseball and fastpitch teams squared off this past week. The North fastpitch team has gotten off to a good start this season, while South has been trying to fight their way thru the slump that they have had this spring. The visiting North team had the first bat and scored a run, but South rose to the occasion and scored 3 runs to garner an early lead. South Sophomore Maggie McCollum had control problems in the second inning. She walked the first four batters that she faced and they all would score. She settled down finally and started to find the strike zone to work her way out of the inning. The South team likewise had no problem scoring on their at bat, ringing up another 3 runs.
In the third inning, North was the only team to score, getting in a run to tie up the game. Meanwhile South was three and out. But for the remainder of the game North would only score one more run while South would score three for a 9-7 upset victory. Hitting wise South's Kali DuChemin and Dani Lipps both hit triples, while Kim Deleranko would get credit for 4 runs off of two base hits.
“It was ugly early”, remarked coach Robinson after the win, “I thought we hit the ball well early. But Maggie [McCollum] struggled the first three innings. Luckily she worked thru it and came back real solid. But I was real happy with our winning, we were real aggressive on the bases. For instance Kimmie [Deleranko] stretched an error into a double. I was pleased that we hit the ball when we had to. We did have two errors, which for us is great. We had some nice plays on defense, Kimmie picked off a lead runner on a grounder. All in all in was a great win for our team. We just need to keep this aggressiveness and this confidence to get after people.” Next she was asked about the hitting. She noted Kali DuChemin's triple and had this to say about Dani Lipp's, “She has been struggling this season with her hitting until last week when she got a home run. This game she got a triple, and I knew she had it in her all year. She had been getting down on herself. But for last two ball games she has really started to come thru for us.”
South could not repeat their success for the rest of the week, they lost a hard fought game against Covington 6-4. Kali Duchemin did manage a home run, while Maggie McCollum had 4 strikeouts. Against Newton they got down early and although they tried to rally late, they could not overcome the deficit and lost 9-3. Kim Deleranko and Maggie McCollum had 2 hits in the loss. Comments: email: Chris Tilton
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