By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

STAYTON, Ore.–  Cascade jumped out quick and strongly against Stayton in their 9-3 win over the Eagles Wednesday afternoon at Stayton High School,

The Cougars, looking to open up some more space between themselves and their rivals in Stayton sitting one-two in the Oregon West Conference standings, opened the contest leading 5-1.  Chole Campbell, Jaimy Bangert, Malia Scanlan and Lexi Gidcumb, all drove in runs.  Gidcumb’s 2RBI single in the top of the third inning made it 5-0 before Christine McCants broke the shutout in the bottom half of the inning with an RBI single.

Consistency seemed to be a tough thing to find for both teams in this game.  Cascade’s lead was there to start, but the Eagles eventually came back to make it a 5-3 game with Kenzi Hollenbeck and Aubrey Werkner both driving in runs on sacrifice hits going into the fifth.

“It showed us a lot.  It showed us that we need to come out strong at the beginning and have fun.  Like our coaches told us, go a half-inning at a time  Don’t worry about the end of the game, go half-a-inning, half-a-inning,” said Abby Archuleta.  “Just having fun and staying loose, don’t be so tense and fix the little mistakes.  If we make a mistake, brush it off immediately.”

The Cougars settled down after surrendering three-straight runs to close out the game with a four-run rally of their own to hand the Eagles just their third-loss of the season.

“It was kind of rocky.  It was good at first and then it went down and then we brought it back up.  I feel like it’ll be easier for us (moving forward) to stay with it,” Gidcumb said.  “We just kind of stayed with it and kept our bats up.”

Gidcumb drove in 3RBI’s in the win, Campbell and Scanlan each had two hits apiece as Cascade heads to Woodburn on Thursday.  McCantis led the Eagles with two hits as they head to Sweet Home Thursday.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald