The North Butler softball team received contributions from everyone in their lineup to help them earn a quality bounce back win 9-1 in five innings over AGWSR on Friday, as aired on 99 The Wave.
In the first inning, with two runners on base, North Butler’s Kamri Groen looped a double into left field driving in both runners, to give the Bearcats a 2-0 lead. The Bearcats added another run in the inning on an RBI ground out by Mackenzie Schultz to go up 3-0. Jenika Rae helped get the Cougars on the board with an RBI single in the second that made it a 3-1 game. The Bearcats began to pull away in the bottom of the third, with an RBI double by Schultz and a sacrifice fly RBI by Eden Wix that extended the lead to 5-1. The Bearcats drove in two more runs in the fourth for a 7-1 advantage on an RBI single apiece by Groen and Izzy O’Dowd. The Bearcats ended the game early with two runs in the fifth on a Cougars wild pitch and an RBI fielder choice grounder by Zoey Thompson that scored the game winner.
Bearcats Head Coach Austin Guerrero on being active on the basepads and Saturday’s tournament.
“Our approach has got to be aggressive. I’m always preaching the word aggressiveness and attacking. We’ve unfortunately not scored enough runs in a lot of these close low scoring games to win. That’s why we try to just push base running, small ball and every little advantage we can try to get, to get as many runs on the board as we have to. Hats off to our girls for doing that tonight, following the game plan, getting a small ball bunt down when needed and then driving in runs when we had base running situations,” says Guerrero. “Now we head to play two quality teams up in Lake Mills. We start off in the morning with a good Clear Lake team, I know that they can hit the ball. We’re giving ourselves a chance to get back to where we want to be, and that’s 500. Once you get to there, you just continue to build and play the best softball you can towards the middle of the season.”
Five different Bearcats drove in at least one run led by Groen with three RBI’s and Schultz had two RBI’s. Groen in the circle in five innings had eight strikeouts and allowed only one run.
AGWSR Head Coach Brock Holmgaard on battling in deep counts and maintaining local matchups.
“Especially when we have two strikes. Anything close, we’re fouling it off. We don’t have to have a base hit, but if we can foul it off, foul it off. Eventually the pitcher’s going to make a mistake and throw the ball somewhere where we can hit it hard and get it out into the field. We really work on that and really stress that with our batters, having a good approach to play,” says Holmgaard. “Making sure we keep it up, keep this going for next year. This is definitely one we are going to make sure we get back. I feel like it’s a fairly competitive game. If we play our best softball, we can really compete with each other.”
Rae drove in the Cougars only run. Claire Culver in 4 ⅓ innings allowed five earned runs and had three strikeouts in the loss.
North Butler (3-5) will play at Lake Mills tournament on Saturday. AGWSR (3-6) will play at Iowa Falls-Alden on Tuesday.
