Full team effort

The Patriots dropped their first game of the season on Friday as the offense never got going.

With prom on Saturday, they didn’t have any games or practices scheduled before their matchup with the Raiders.

Despite not getting back on the field, the Patriots had no trouble reviving their bats.

The Jay County High School softball team got contributions from nearly its entire lineup Monday to overwhelm the visiting Wapahani Raiders 9-4.

“It’s a good bounce back from last week,” JCHS coach Doug Arbuckle said. “I was a little bit skeptical coming into a Monday game because of the weekend and on top of that we had prom Saturday.

“The girls responded well. Other than the one inning where they put some stuff together and got the four runs we played well defensively. We made some things happen with the bats and ran the bases well.”

Jay County High School freshman Morgan Missicano goes down to her knees to catch a low line drive in right field in Monday's game against Wapahani. Missicano had two hits, two runs and an RBI in the 9-4 victory. (The Commercial Review/Andrew Balko)

 

The first inning looked similar to Friday’s loss to Madison-Grant, with Mady Fraley grounding out to shortstop, Mallory Winner lining out to second base and Riah Champ grounding out to third base. Wapahani’s Zoey Koger only needed seven pitches to put down the three Patriot sluggers in short order.

In the next three innings, the Patriots (5-1) would not struggle the same way.

Jay County exploded for six runs in the second inning as 11 batters came to the plate. Jaelynn Lykins and Jozey Shimp led off the inning by reaching base on errors committed by shortstop Emily Luce and second baseman Matilyn Rhoades, respectively.

With no outs and two runners on, Jay County had three freshmen and another first-year starter set to come to the plate. Carley Trinidad started things off by executing a sacrifice bunt to move the runners to second and third.

Arbuckle asked Morgan Missicano to do the same. Not only did she get the bunt down the third baseline to score the run, she also found herself safe at first base.

“I’m feeling pretty good,” Missicano said. “Coach (Arbuckle) told me to hit it down the line to try and get on base. With Cali (Yates) hitting behind me, I know she’s a good hitter and can hit us in.”

Yates did exactly that, smacking a shallow fly ball to center field to allow Shimp to score and Missicano to advance to third (she stole second during the at bat).

Freshman Brooklynn Bright followed up with her first hit and RBI of her career before. Fraley hit a sacrifice fly and Winner and Champ both added RBI singles to wrap up the second-inning scoring.

Wapahani (7-4) answered with four runs of its own in the top of the third inning, but the bottom three of the Patriots’ order took two back in the second half of the inning. Trinidad grounded out to kick off the inning before Missicano reached first on an infield single. She stole second and moved over to third base on a hit by Yates.

Yates stole second base and Missicano took off for home on the throw down. As part of a designed play, Luce cut the ball off, but her throw wasn’t on target. Missicano scored on the play and Yates moved over to third base.

Bright’s ground out to Luce got Yates across home.

“We have to have production all the way through the lineup to be the team we want to be,” Arbuckle said. “It’s great the way those girls are contributing. We don’t have to count on just one through five so it’s a great feeling.”

The Raiders only did damage in the third inning, when an error by Missicano in right field put the first runner on base. Koger immediately drove Rhoades in with a single before back-to-back doubles by Baylee Richardson and Abi Cross tacked on two more. The final run scored on a single from Zoey Swallow.

After the third inning, Winner only allowed one base runner that never made it into scoring position.

“I just told the girls, ‘there’s times where you have games like this when you hit the ball solid, but it’s just right at girls,’” Wapahani coach Jeff Masters said. “We’re definitely young and have some defensive things we can clean up, but can’t be disappointed with the way they were swinging the bat and hitting the ball. It just didn’t go our way.”