By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

DAYTON, Ore.–  The Yamhill-Carlton softball team bookend their 11-2 win with two separate four-run innings.  Starting the first inning with it as they led 4-1 after the initial inning and again in the seventh inning to close out the win, turning a then 7-2 game into what would’ve been the final result going into Monday’s game with Scio.

“It was important to get the hits that we needed when we needed them.  We’ve struggled that a little bit in the past, but I think tonight we were able to come out and push through our differences, push through what we had going on…whether it’s errors or anything else, i think it was important to for us to push through and get through this game because we just beat one of the top teams in the State.  This is important for us going forward into Monday,” the Tigers Kya Ellis said, who had 3RBI’s in the win.  “That Scio game really showed us we got to be able to hit when we need to hit.  Our hitting wasn’t necessarily on that game, but we’re going to have to be able to do and progress into that.  Work harder and be able to go into Monday playing Scio, being able to hit as hard as we can instead of having innings where we have that gap where we’re not going to be able to make contact with the ball.”

In between, the Pirates slowed the Tigers pace.  A few hiccups along the way in terms of errors during Saturday afternoon’s game did put a damper on a solid defensive output, but the squad really had stepped up their game having playingthe Loggers and now Yamhill-Carlton the past two days.  Rachel Baumholtz struck out six Tiger batters and sister Anna Baumholtz led the offense going 3-for-3 batting and Rylie Hedgecock contributed another two hits in the defeat.

“It really showed us all that we’re getting there and hanging with all of those other teams and we’re just as good as them, we just need to fix a few things and we’re right up there with them.  We can do it,” starts Hedgecock.”We held them off pretty well for a couple of innings there.  We had a couple of errors there that we needed to clean up, other than that I’m proud of the girls.  We all played really well, I’m really happy for all of them.  It was a fun game, no matter the win-or-lose, it was fun.”

The Pirates will have four games in five days this next week, all on the road starting with Taft on Monday.

Briley Ingram had six strikeouts for the Tigers.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald