Published: August 26, 2008 03:10 pm      

Saturday split for Ada

Simpson's softball club falls to Bethel, downs Coalgate

Bethel — The Ada Lady Cougars got a physics lesson in their meeting with unbeaten Class 3A power Bethel at Saturday’s Bethel Festival: where rain goes, rust sometimes follows.

After having all of its previous games last week rained out, Ada managed just two hits and gift-wrapped runs for the Lady Wildcats in the fifth and sixth innings to drop a tough 2-1 decision in the Festival opener, but the Lady Cougars bounced back to rally past Coalgate, 6-2, in their second contest of the day.

Junior Hanna Huling took the tough-luck loss in the first game to fall to 1-4 on the season, then she came back to allow one infield hit to earn a four-inning save in relief of Lindsey Elliot and also stroked a game-clinching two-run triple against Coalgate.

“We’ve got a lot of things to work on,” first-year Ada coach Scott Simpson said after seeing his club move to 2-5 on the season with Saturday’s split. “We didn’t get to play at all this week, but I’m happy for the most part.

“Our biggest problem is we don’t usually have just one error — we usually make two or three, and they always seem to come in the late innings,” he added. “That’s something we have to improve on.”

Game 1

Bethel 2, Ada 1

Huling allowed Bethel (7-0) to get just two runners into scoring position in the first four innings, and she carried a 1-0 lead to the bottom of the fifth. But after retiring the first two batters she faced in that frame, she surrendered a line-drive double to left-center to nine-hole hitter Tessa Pierce and made a critical error later in the inning to allow the tying run to score.

Brittany Watson followed Pierce’s hit with an infield single, then Jessica Simmons bunted back to the mound. Huling fielded the ball cleanly, but Ada first baseman Alanah Canfield couldn’t handle her low throw as Pierce scored.

Bethel’s second run was also unearned, courtesy of two Ada errors on the same play in the bottom of the sixth.

Clean-up hitter Jordan Battige started the inning with a ground-ball single up the middle and was replaced by pinch runner Katy Black. Machali Thompson followed with a fielder’s choice grounder to shortstop that retired Black at second base for the first out, but Olivia Farris hit the next pitch to Ada shortstop Shelbey Franz, who threw low to first base for the first error in the inning as Thompson moved to third.

Canfield retrieved the ball and threw to the plate, but her one-hopper skipped past freshman catcher Taryn Jack, allowing Thompson to race home with what proved to be the game winner. Farris was thrown out attempting to score on the play for the second out and, after Kami Adams and winning pitcher Savanna Humphrey followed with singles, Huling retired Pierce on a fly ball to left to finally end the inning.

Ada grabbed a first-inning lead when junior leadoff hitter Destiny Smith — who scored in four of the five innings in which she led off Saturday — blooped a single to left, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Franz, stole third and scored when the throw to third sailed into left field.

Humphrey — who struck out seven (all in the first five innings), walked one batter and hit two others — settled down after the first-inning rally and surrendered just one hit — a two-out single off the third-base bag by Nikita Parnacher in the second inning — the rest of the way. Ada mounted one more threat, putting runners at first and second with one out on an error and a hit batter before Humprey retired Huling (the Ada cleanup hitter) on a pop to Watson, the Bethel shortstop, near the third-base bag.

The infield fly rule was called on the play, and the two Ada runners — Franz and Elliott — moved to second and third when Watson dropped the ball, but Rainee Easley lined out to Farris at second base to end the inning.

Huling scattered seven hits, struck out just one and was victimized by four Ada errors, but she didn’t walk a batter in going the distance.

Game 2

Ada 6, Coalgate 2

Coalgate (1-5) banged out five hits off Elliott (1-0) in the second and third innings to wipe out a 1-0 Ada lead and move in front 2-1, but the Lady Wildcats wasted a chance to score more in each inning and paid for it when the Lady Cougars took the lead for good with two ugly runs in the bottom of the third.

The rally began with an opposite-field line-drive single to left by Smith, then Franz hit a little blooper over the mound that landed in no-man’s land for an infield hit. Elliott followed with a bunt up the first base line, but after fielding the ball cleanly, Coalgate first baseman Leslie Parker didn’t make a throw, leaving the bases loaded with nobody out.

Smith scored the tying run on a wild pitch, and Jack plated Franz with what proved to be the winning run on a one-out ground ball to second.

Huling relieved Elliott to start the fourth, and Ada added another strange run in the fifth on Smith’s leadoff single, another infield hit by Franz, and a soft line drive by Elliott that landed on the second-base bag. Coalgate shortstop Cherokee Acker grabbed the ball and retired Franz on a bang-bang play with a diving tag of of the bag, but Smith alertly scored all the way from second to make it 4-2.

“Destiny really makes us go,” Simpson said of Foster, who was 3-for-7 in the two games and reached base four times, scoring each time to account for more than half of Ada’s run total for the day. “She did some good things today. She’s been playing for three years, even though she’s just a junior. And she’s playing smarter now, too.”

The fifth-inning run was more than enough for Huling, who walked three in her four innings on the mound in Game 2 but didn’t give up a hit until Johnson beat out an infield single with two outs in the seventh. And the Ada righthander helped her own cause with the Lady Cougars’ biggest hit of the day — at the end of her team’s best at-bat of the Festival — in the bottom of the sixth.

Deedee Thompson led off the inning with her second hit of the day, a line-drive single to left-center, and Parnacher worked a walk at the end of a nice nine-pitch at-bat of her own. Alanah Caufield struck out looking at a 1-2 pitch for the first out, and Coalgate sophomore righthander Miranda Hix quickly got ahead of Huling 0-2.

But Huling — who slid into the nine-hole in the batting order when she entered the game in the fourth — battled back to run the count full, fouling off a couple of pitches along the way, before lining Hix’s eighth pitch of the at-bat over the head of Johnson in center for a two-run triple.

“I had planned on bringing Hanna back in the second game,” Simpson said. “I just wanted to give a breather for an inning or two. She really came up big today.”

Ada took a 1-0 lead in the first, and Smith was the catalyst once again. She led off with a bunt back to the mound and reached second on an error (Coalgate’s only error of the game) on the play, then she moved to third on a foul ball behind first. Coalgate second basemen Tandra Elkins made a nice hustling catch on the ball, but she fell down and couldn’t make a throw. Smith then scored on Elliott’s line-drive single up the middle.

Coalgate answered with a run in the top of the second on an error, a one-out single by Leslie Parker and a clutch two-out RBI hit by Robynne Lambert, but Elliott struck out Elkins on a nice change-up for the third out with runners at second and third.

The Lady Wildcats took their only lead of the game in the third, but again they wasted a chance for more.

Acker led off the inning with a single to left and was sacrificed to second by Krystan Glasco. Johnson then hit a screaming line drive that caromed off the throwing hand of Ada third baseman Jesse Wolf and went into foul territory down the left field line for an RBI double. Wolf had to leave the game after the play and was replaced by Charlesy Foster.

Kalee Pebworth followed with a soft single to right-center to move Johnson to third, but Elliott got a big boost to avoid further trouble. Franz fielded Laramie Beal’s ground ball and fired to Jack at the plate to retire Johnson for the second out, then Franz nipped Parker at first on another ground ball two pitches later to end the inning.

Smith, Franz and Thompson had two of Ada’s eight hits in the victory, while Johnson was 2-for-4 to pace Coalgate’s six-hit attack.