In Friday’s Battle for Bradford softball game that aired on 104.9 KLMJ, late game heroics gave both teams a chance to win. But Hampton-Dumont-CAL had the final say in a 10-8 win in eight innings.
The Bulldogs had a quick start when Charlee Morton hit a solo homer to center in the game’s third at-bat. The Cadets found an answer in the third when Isabelle Janssen tripled to drive in Noelle Winters. Back-and-forth action started in the fifth inning. Hampton-Dumont-CAL scored three in the fifth on RBI hits by Aliyah Swieter, Keely Moorehead and Madison Heilskov. In the sixth, Swieter drove in another, and two scored on a reach on error by Addison Aalbers with two outs, making it 7-2. After scoring single runs in the fifth and sixth, the Cadets put together a fierce comeback in the seventh with their backs against the wall. Isabelle Janssen drove in the first run, followed shortly by a Cidni Phipps RBI to cut the deficit to two. Abigail Janssen reached on an error with two outs to allow a run to score, and Brooklyn Handeland singled to drive in Alivia Tupper to tie the game at 7-7. With the bases loaded and two outs, Bulldog pitcher Kendall Eilderts delivered a strikeout to send the game to extra innings. The Bulldogs had an immediate answer. Morton singled to drive in Swieter, giving them the lead for good.
To complete the scoring, Keely Moorehead drove in two more. The Cadets threatened in the bottom of the eighth, but were held to one run.
“It feels great to get such a big win,” Bulldog senior Charlee Morton says. “We’re a really young team. So just getting this win early in the season will allow us to build some confidence. And we know we’ve got a big rivalry against them, so we knew we wanted to win and I’m just glad we could finish it.”
Head Coach Kelsey Enslin was proud of how her team battled in an intense atmosphere.
“When we we’re up, we felt pretty good going into the seventh inning up five,” Head Coach Kelsey Esnlin says. “And then it kind of felt like, is it slipping away? So to see us come back out in the top of the eighth and have some key at bats, I’m really proud of the girls. We talk a lot about growing as the season goes. We have really young girls out there besides our two seniors, so taking those opportunities and like I said, I felt like we grew a lot tonight.”
Morton led the Bulldogs with three hits.
Cadet coach Emily Banken says there were many missed opportunities due to errors.
“We took a little bit longer than I’d like to get going at the plate,” Banken says. “And we made it maybe a little bit too exciting waiting until the seventh to score those runs. But I was really happy that they kept fighting. We made quite a few mental and physical mistakes throughout the game, and that’s going to happen. So I was glad that they could recover. But in the future, I’d really like to see them minimize those things, rely on their experience, because a lot of the girls have played and played together. So I’m hoping that they can take today and learn from it and come back better next week.”
Isabelle Janssen, Phipps and Tupper each had three hits, and Janssen drove in two runs to lead offensively.
Hampton-Dumont-CAL will return to action at Clarion-Goldfield-Dows Monday. The Cadets will be at Humboldt the same day.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r2wc-WIjOQ?si=K3FiWiv5wUUZpTK3&w=560&h=315]
