Lady Hawks miscues help lead Colville to doubleheader sweep

When hitting and pitching struggle it’s often a team’s defense that keeps them in games.

Saturday against visiting Colville, even Cheney’s defense found itself floundering as the Lady Hawks dropped a doubleheader to the league-leading, one-loss Indians.

“We had terrible games defensively,” head coach Gary Blake said. “We made four errors in both games and you can’t do that against the good teams.”

Colville, at 9-0 in the Great Northern League, 10-1 overall, is a good team, but not as dominating as they have been in the past, Blake believes. In both games, the tale of the tape can be found in stats between the mound and field.

Cheney sophomore Megan McDowell allowed 12 base runners on five hits and seven walks in game one, but only one earned run in a 9-0 loss. Her counterpart in the pitching circle, McKenna Cabbage, wasn’t that much better in allowing 11 Cheney runners on one hit – Julia Boyd’s single – seven walks while hitting three Lady Hawks’ batters.

In game two Bailey Towey allowed 12 Colville hits, throwing a drop ball that is low but always around the plate, leading to a lot of ground balls. The junior hurler struck out four and walked one, but allowed just six earned runs in Cheney’s 13-2 loss as Lady Hawks errors contributed to the rest.

Cheney managed to hit a bit better against Cabbage in the second game, with hits by Katie Bethel and Julia Boyd, the latter’s two-out double to left center in the fourth driving in Cheney’s only runs of the afternoon.

The losses drop Cheney to 3-5 in league, 4-5 overall as they near the halfway point of the GNL season with Tuesday’s game at last place Pullman, 0-7. With a lot of softball remaining the fifth-place Lady Hawks are still in the thick of the league race with just two games in the loss column and three games in the win separating second-place West Valley (5-2, 6-3) from sixth-place Clarkston (2-4).

“It’s obvious to me we have a pretty strong league, stronger than we’ve had,” Blake said.

All of the teams have at least one really good pitcher and are able to put together some offense. That includes Cheney, with the exception of last Saturday, but for Blake, the concern is the Lady Hawks are also giving up a lot of runs.

Cheney will have plenty of action this week to get back into the groove it was working on prior to spring break. Besides Pullman the Lady Hawks host Idaho’s Lakeland in a non-league hookup Wednesday and take on West Valley in a doubleheader Saturday.

“The league is strong,” Blake said. “We’re young and still working on consistency.”

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].