By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

TURNER, Ore.–  The question became for the Cascade Softball team, just playing in their second game in two weeks due to weather, was how their energy would be coming out against Newport Thursday afternoon?

The Cougars built themselves a 5-0 lead going into the third inning.  Three coming from a three-run Hannah Walliman home run in the first, another coming from Emma Hilifiker’s single in the second and an Abby Jeppsen sac-fly in the same inning to build the lead.

“We came off really great and with a lot of energy from being locked up in the gym for two weeks. Just straight-up practices.  It wasn’t quite our speed, so I think we were really grateful to be able to come out and play today,” Hilifiker said.

Hilifiker went 3-for-4 with 3RBI’s.  Hilifiker’s teammate Kailee Bode also collected three hits in the game for Cascade as seven Cougars had multi-hit games against the Cubs.

Walliman followed up helping her cause back in the first with a solid pitching performance against Newport.  The senior arm went five innings, striking out ten and allowed just two hits with her offense finally finding their groove in the sixth inning with eight runs.

“It was huge,” Walliman said of the energy.  “One of our topics in our talks is that we need more energy and the last two games that we’ve played, we’ve came out with our energy.  We just got to keep on doing that.”

And sustaining that energy will be big knowing that they’ll have five games over the course of the next seven games.  Two against Woodburn on Saturday, road trip to Sisters on Monday, home against Sweet Home on Wednesday and at Philomath on Thursday all are ahead of Cascade in the coming days.

“Keeping our energy up and our momentum and motivation up.  Stuff like that because we tend to fall flat sometimes with our energy, I feel like playing the game without delays will help us appreciate more and ready to come out firing,” Hilifiker said.

The doubleheader against the Bulldogs on Saturday will start at 10:30am at Cascade High School with Game two to follow afterwards.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald