The Aplington-Parkersburg summer sports teams will travel to Grundy Center for NICL crossover games Tuesday. The softball game will air on 104.9 KLMJ.
The Falcon softball team will look to bounce back from Monday’s losses to Hudson in a doubleheader, where they fell 21-5 in six innings and 15-7. The defense and pitching staff will continue to settle into their roles, doing so with exclusively upperclassmen. Head Coach Travis Walker says senior Ada Switzer brings a great amount of varsity experience, but Aubrey Williamson and Eva Walker provide necessary depth.
“She was kind of sidelined there for about a year with a hip situation, so she’s definitely worked through that and has been building her motor,” Walker says. “So we’re really excited about Ada leading up that pitching group. Then Aubrey Williamson has logged some serious innings for us the last couple of years. And we feel really great about Aubrey as well. So we feel like any given night, we can throw the ball over the plate and be competitive. And we can even mix Eva in there a little bit. We obviously need her in some other spots in the field too. So that kind of becomes a little limited, but we’ve got some nice upperclassmen pitching options that I feel really confident about.”
Grundy Center notched a signature win last week, 5-4 in 11 innings over #8 (2A) East Marshall, but fell 2-1 at home to Dike-New Hartford Monday. The team has been crisp offensively, with a team average of .371 and three players batting over .400, led by Maddy Hendershot’s .559.
“We’ve been pretty aggressive, and just depending on the situation, they all have a very good approach when they get to the plate,” Grundy Center coach Andy Lebo says. “They know what the game plan is and they stick to it, but they’ve just really started hitting the ball well. We do have quite a few hitting over .400 here lately, but it’s been up and down the lineup. We’ve actually been bunting the ball quite a bit, so we’re pretty versatile in that situation. But it’s just neat to see these kids from game one. We didn’t hit it quite as well and you know how this works. That’s the transition from the small schools to where we’ve got these athletes we share with every sport. So there is a little bit of transition. The fortunate thing for us is we’ve got a core group that plays an awful lot of club softball. So they get a lot of at-bats and see a lot of live pitching in the spring.”
Coverage will start at 4:45 p.m., followed by the first pitch at 5:00.
