The Lady Indians improved their record to an impressive 18-0 on Monday. Strafford hosted Mount Vernon and defended their home field with a narrow 3-2 victory.
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Strafford scratched across a couple of runs in the bottom of the first inning, putting pressure on the Lady Mountaineers right away. Mount Vernon did get on the board in the top of the fourth, but left much to be desired in the inning.
With just one out and the bases loaded, Mount Vernon’s McKenna Hagerman hit one deep to right field. The right fielder dropped the fly ball, allowing a run to score. The defense was able to rally on the play, throwing out one base runner at second base and then throwing out another runner at home to end the inning with just one run crossing the plate.
“If you ask both coaches, you could say we could probably play better,” said Strafford coach Dale Bean. “You give up extra bases, give up errors and things like that, it’ll hurt you. But both teams were able to give up errors in this game… we just ended up with one more run than they did.”
The defense and base running was shaky for much of the game, but the pitchers were terrific. Strafford’s Zoey Mullings and Mount Vernon’s Maddie Brown played their best with runners on base. In fact, each team stranded eight base runners in the game, leaving plenty of scoring opportunities on the base paths.
“Maddie [Brown], she did a great job whenever runners got on base,” said Bean. “She buckled down and she didn’t give us anything hard or fat to hit. She kind of pitched around it. That was just a good pitching job by her. Once we got people on, she pitched around it. And I think it was more of her pitching around it than us failing, but at the same time we need to come through with some more hits than that in those positions.”
“We had a few lapses early,” said Mount Vernon head coach Matt Schubert, “but late we made some plays. And it’s not too often you have the bases loaded with nobody out and you come away not giving up any runs.”
Maddie Brown had six strikeouts and left the bases loaded twice in the game. Mullings delivered four strikeouts and also stranded the bases loaded in the second inning. Mullings, who in addition to pitching also hits in the three-hole for Strafford, knocked a solo home run in the first inning to get the adrenaline flowing.
“I was just a little nervous on the mound starting out,” said Mullings. “But then when I got that homer, I had a lot of confidence after that… I just know that they [Mount Vernon] were really on my fastball because we’ve already played them during the season in the Marionville Tournament. They were really on my fastball and I needed to throw some more off-speed to get them off-balance.”
Strafford beat Mount Vernon in the Marionville Tournament 8-1 on Apr. 13. Monday’s game was obviously much closer. Before this game, the Lady Indians’ closest contest was a 4-1 win over Fair Grove on Apr. 4.
“We really needed this game,” said Coach Bean. “We needed a close game. If you look on our schedule there are only a few games where we were close at the end. And in some of those games, they look kind of close on the schedule but it really wasn’t that close in the game. So I love these types of games. I was waiting to see how the girls responded in these types of games, and I’m happy that we got it done. We got the job done.”
“That was an excellent game between two excellent teams,” Coach Schubert said. “We’re going to take away that it was 3-2. And we made several mistakes that really aren’t typical of a few of our girls. Like I said, it was an excellent game between two excellent teams.”
Mount Vernon (16-7) will go back to work on Tuesday, Apr. 26 as they host the Lady Jays of Clever. Strafford (18-0) has just two games left in the season as they hope to stay perfect on the year. Strafford will host the Class 1 District 9 tournament – which includes the Lady Mountaineers – beginning on May 2.
