Not a lot’s clicking and meshing these days with the Medical Lake girl’s softball team and it’s showing with six consecutive losses in the Northeast A League.
The most recent of those came last week with an 11-8 loss to Riverside April 28 and a doubleheader loss Saturday to Deer Park, 4-2 and 11-6.
“We made too many mistakes both offensively and defensively,” Cardinals’ head coach Tim Blakely wrote in an email after he watched his team fall into sixth place in the NEA standings with a 4-7 league record (5-9 overall).
Against Deer Park (7-4, 11-5) the Cardinals faced the Stag’s ace Kylie Sweeney — twice — and the senior was spot on all day. She gave up just four hits, all singles, and struck out 11 in the opener. Sarah Mayer had two hits for the Cardinals.
Trailing 1-0 through two innings, the Cardinals broke through to take the lead in their half of the third. Maleeka Wegner was hit by a pitch and later scored on a throwing error. Then Taylor Pavao got on board with a fielder’s choice and scored on a Hannah Petek single.
Medical Lake scored two more runs in the third as Pavao got on base with a single and later scored on a Deer Park error. But that was all Sweeney allowed.
“I’m not surprised, Kylie has thrown just about every game for Deer Park since her freshman year.” Blakely said. “ML just didn’t have enough hits.”
Deer Park would tie it in their half of the third and then score single runs in the fourth with an RBI single from Payton Erickson proving to be the winning run. They added insurance in the fifth. Sweeney ended the game striking out five of the final six Medical Lake batters.
In the second game Medical Lake led 3-0 through three innings, with a pair of doubles from Petek and Kaitlyn Pruitt giving the Cards a 1-0 lead.
The Cardinals increased the lead to 3-0 in the top of the third when Maleeka Wegner walked, advanced to second on a single by Pavao and scored on an error by the Deer Park centerfielder. Pavao also later scored on an error.
But Deer Park quickly erased the lead, exploding for a six-run third while sending 11 batters to the plate in the inning.
Medical Lake would close it to a one-run game in the sixth when Petek opened the inning with a single and scored after Sweeney suffered rare control problems, issuing three consecutive walks. Bradyn Wegner, who was a recipient of one of those base on balls, also later scored.
Where Deer Park used power in their first big inning, they staged a two-out, five-run sixth inning that increased their lead to 11-5 with a combination of four walks, a pair of errors and two base hits.
Glori Cheevers scored the Cardinals’ final run in the seventh after leading off with a single
Outside of that little control lapse in the sixth, her 13th innings of duty on the day at that point, Sweeney was again nearly impossible to hit and went on to strikeout 12 Cardinal batters for her second win on the day.
At home versus Riverside (7-2, 12-2) last Tuesday, the Rams had a 6-0 lead after two innings and the pitching of Keelin Hunt was just enough of a difference as the 2014 league MVP struck out nine Medical Lake batters. It was Hunt’s second win in a week against the Cardinals.
Cheevers, Pavao, Petek and Claire Dormaier each had two-hit games for Medical Lake.
The Cardinals were at home against 1-8 Newport, Tuesday, May 12, and play a doubleheader May 16 at Colville (7-4) so they can certainly move up in the standings.
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].
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