Williamsport falls to Central Mountain on the road in softball action
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MILL HALL — Central Mountain's softball team hosted Williamsport in a conference matchup on Thursday and, after coming off a big win in the Wildcats' last game, Central Mountain's energy never let up.
It resulted in Central Mountain securing a 4-1 win.
The game was a battle of the pitchers with the first four innings of the game being scoreless. Wildcat starting pitcher Adalynn McKeague had four strikeouts and only allowed one run to score.
"She did well, she hit her spots real well and she has tremendous spin she spins the ball really well the velocity we are still working to get that back where we want it, but she did well," Central Mountain coach Fred Caldwell said.
The Millionaires starting pitcher Chelsey Harrison had three strikeouts and held off the Wildcat offense early.
"Phenomenal. That was her first ever game pitching at the varsity level and she did a phenomenal job," Williamsport coach Chase Smith said. "We hoped that she would be able to keep them off balance a bit and she did more than we would have expected."
The bottom of the fourth inning started when leadoff batter Sophie Mitchell — who went 1 for 4 — got on base with a single to centerfield. From there she was able to steal second base to put herself into scoring position. Ava Doyle (1 for 3) was due up to bat and, after battling in her at-bat, she was able to hit a line-drive up the middle and bring Mitchell home for the first run of the game.
Doyle was able to touch home in the same inning when Katelyn Bowman was able to reach base after an error by Millionaire short stop.
"We have been dealing with that all year and our defense has been a weak, weak point. We tried to move a lot of things around today to try to strengthen that up," Smith stated. "Seems like the balls were finding the wrong spot at the wrong time for us. We adjusted nicely we tried to lessen the damage as much as we could. That was really the difference in the game, we had a lot of silly errors that just compounded on us."
The top of the sixth inning had Ashlyn Robinson batting first who was able to line a double off the centerfield fence to get into scoring position early in the inning. During the next at bat, a wild pitch allowed her to advance to third where Baily Livermore hit a fly ball out to centerfield that allowed Robinson the tag up and score on the play.
"We faced her multiple years in a row and we have never had a lot of success so we were really focused on shorting up our swings and putting the ball in play. Just making sure that we didn't get high strike out numbers and we did great with that they had really good at bats." Smith commented on how the Millionaires were able to adjust throughout the game against McKeague.
The Wildcats would go on to score two more runs with RBIs from Cirstyn Watson (1 for 3) in the fifth and Cora Myers (3 for 4) in the sixth inning securing the win for the Wildcats.
"We did make adjustments throughout the game. I would like to see us make a little more adjustments on some of those pitches," Cadlwell said. "We had too many fly balls and we were reaching for a few and we just need to sit back on them and wait a little longer, but they did make in game adjustments and that's something to keep working on."
Williamsport 000 001 0 – 1
CM 000 211 x – 4
Chelsey Harrison and Emily McAnelly. Adalynn McKeague and Katelyn Bowman. W: McKeague. L: Harrison.
Top Williamsport hitters: Ashlyn Robinson 1B, run; Emma Vollman 2 BB; Bailey Livermore, 2 RBIs; Lili Cox 2-3, 2B; Bella Reddy 1-1. Top Central Mountain hitters: Madisyn Wian 1-4; Maddison Hardy 2-3, BB; Harley Kunes 2B, run; Cora Myers 1-2, 2 BB, run; Sophie Mitchell 1-4, SB, run; TaylorWahlers 2-3; Ava Doyle 1-3, SB, RBI, run.