Lady Blackhawks sweep Greyhounds

Sometimes the stats speak for themselves.

That’s the tale told in one particular stat from the Cheney High School softball team’s Great Northern League loss last Tuesday, April 23, to visiting league-leader West Valley. The Lady Blackhawks surrendered 22 hits, which is quite a bit, but more impacting were the seven errors that led to a number of unearned Eagle runs in the 19-9 setback.

Some of those came in West Valley’s six-run fifth inning that made a 9-6 game all but out of reach for Cheney. The Eagles added four more in the top of the sixth, and despite a three-run bottom of the inning, the Lady Blackhawks could get no closer.

Isabella King led Cheney at the plate with three hits while Jasmine Rison added two more. Alexis Mitchell took the loss on the mound.

Lady Blackhawks head coach Gary Blake said the errors were “not really explainable” given his team’s recent play. The girls met Wednesday to talk about it, and ended the week with some good practices.

“They had it pulled together by the weekend,” Blake said.

Indeed they did, notching a convincing doubleheader sweep of visiting fifth-place Pullman, shutting out the Greyhounds 10-0 in game one and rallying from an early 3-0 deficit to take the nightcap 11-6.

Mitchell got the win in game one, scattering three hits while walking two, hitting no batters and striking out seven. The Lady Blackhawk committed just one error, and had an impressive .435 batting average, led by two hits each by Parker Cagle and Maria Guglielmo.

Cheney broke the game open with six runs in the fourth inning, led by King’s three-run home run.

Pullman scored three runs off King in the top of the first inning of game two, but the sophomore straightened things out after that, blanking the visitors until the sixth inning. In the meantime, Cheney rallied with runs in the second and third, taking the lead for good with five in the fourth.

King gave up four earned runs on 11 hits, walking one and striking out nine. Guglielmo, King, Logan Krantz, Alyson Dassow and Pyper Cagle each had two hits to pace Cheney’s offense, which hit .400 in game two.

For the day Guglielmo was 4 for 6, .667 BA, with three RBIs. Krantz hit solo home runs in both games, and has homered in the past three games. Overall, Cheney hit .420 against the Greyhounds bringing their season average to .317.

“That sounds puny compared to previous years, but a .300 team batting average is pretty darn good I think,” Blake said. “The problem is our .881 fielding percentage. You need to be at least in the .900s.”

The Lady Blackhawks still have some time left to get their fielding percentage up and some more wins in the left hand column. Cheney sits in second-place at 4-2 in the GNL, 6-8 overall, and has four games remaining on a somewhat abbreviated schedule.

Cheney traveled to Clarkston for a single game on Tuesday, April 30, and returns home end the regular season with a doubleheader Friday against East Valley and a non-league matchup with Northeast A League Deer Park on May 7.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].