Colfax girls smack Spring Valley, slide past Glenwood City

Playing on an extremely windy day on a field up on the hill in Spring Valley, the Colfax girls’ softball team took advantage of the conditions as they collected 14 hits enroute to an 18-8 win in five innings over the Cardinals April 21. Then after leading 6-0 at home against Glenwood City, the Vikings had to hang on for a 10-6 win four days later, leaving them with a 3-1 overall record and 2-1 in conference play.

 Spring Valley

Although the score indicated a blow out for the Vikings, that wasn’t the case early on as Colfax held a 3-0 lead in the top of the first but gave up four runs to the Cardinals in the bottom half of the inning. Both teams added a pair of runs  in the second inning, leaving the Vikings down 6-5, but Taylor Shipman reached base on an error in the third to jump start a four run inning. Equality Wilson moved Shipman up with a single, Courtney Ottinger banged a double, Tiernee Knutson slapped a single and Kori Buchanan sent a fly ball into the swirling wind in left field for a hit and the Vikings were up 9-6.

After being held scoreless in the fourth, the Vikings let loose in the fifth when they used eight hits along with a couple of Cardinal errors to put nine runs across and up their lead to 18-6. Lakken Meredith slammed a double while seven others all banged singles in the long inning. The Cardinals tried to extend the game into a sixth inning with back to back solo homeruns in the bottom of the fifth off Colfax pitcher Meredith, but she bore down and forced a ground ball, a strikeout and a pop up to put the game away.

“The wind was pretty tough for all the outfielders,” Colfax coach Joe Doucette said. “We had a few breaks with the wind and their errors but we had better at bats in this game. Our defense was solid but not great and Meredith battled on the mound all game, walking two batters in the first but only walked one more the rest of the game.”

Ottinger finished 3 for 3 at the plate while Buchanan, Wilson, Knutson and Mallie Doucette all banged a pair of hits. Knutson collected a trio of RBIs and Buchanan crossed the plate four times.

COLFAX                          3  2  4  0  9 – 18
SPRING VALLEY     4  2  0  0  2 –  8

Glenwood City

The Vikings used a combination of hits from Wilson, Emily Tuschl and Ottinger to go with three free passes and a couple of Hilltopper errors to jump out to a 6-0 lead after their first at bat of the game. They tacked on two more in both the fifth and sixth and held a 10-2 lead heading into the seventh inning but Meredith, after whiffing the first two Toppers, seemed to lose her focus and walked four consecutive batters. An infield error didn’t help the Colfax cause any and after a Topper single, the Colfax lead was cut to 10-6 before Meredith forced a ground out to shortstop Doucette to finally end the game.

“We didn’t hit the ball extremely well but we put the ball in play and found ways to score,” coach Doucette said.  “We played pretty good defense until the late innings and didn’t give them any extra outs which is a key for us. Lakken threw strikes most of the game and kept the ball away from the middle of the plate. We have a big stretch of games coming up and we will find out if we are a contender for the conference title or not,” he added.

Karina Wait finished 2 for 4 with three RBIs, Tuschl also went 2 for 4 with a pair of RBIs and Wilson was 2 for 2 bringing in one run. Meredith earned another win, allowing five hits with eight strikeouts and seven walks.

GLENWOOD CITY    0  0  0  1  1  0   4 – 6
COLFAX                            6  0  0  0  2  2  X – 10