The young Bellwood-Antis softball team didn’t see much light at the end of the tunnel in Monday afternoon’s 18-2 loss to visiting Southern Huntingdon. With just one starter back and a host of girls who never played softball before, the 2004 edition of the Lady Blue Devils have been taking some early season lumps.
The girls did show a lot of improvement over previous performances however. Alycia O’Donald and Karlie Rogers collected the first RBIs of the season for the Lady Blue Devils and O’Donald became the first B-A girl in 2004 to collect multiple hits in the same game with two singles. The Bellwood-Antis girls are gaining in proficiency slowly, but the improvement is there and will continue. Three hits in this game double the total for the first two ballgames and only one Lady Blue Devil was a strikeout victim.
Bellwood-Antis had the bases loaded in the first inning, but left all three girls stranded, leaving a total of eight baserunners stranded on the bases over the course of the four-inning contest.
“Our girls did a good job of hitting the ball today,” said Bellwood-Antis coach Alex Sitman, “but Southern Huntingdon had a very solid defense. It’s tough being a young team in this league, but the girls are playing hard and not giving up. That’s all I can ask of them.”
With Southern Huntingdon up 8-2, The Lady Rockets combined four walks with a number of hits and B-A mistakes for 10 runs to put the game away via the mercy rule.
Randy Schmidt slugged a single and a triple for the Southern Huntingdon girls and Emily Wible added a pair of doubles and each drove in three runs to lead the Lady Rockets, who evened their record at 1-1 with the MAC Division III win.
Erica Hucheberger went the distance to pick up the win for Southern, striking out one and walking five, while Heather Detwiler took the loss for Bellwood-Antis.
The Lady Devils (0-3) host Moshannon Valley on Wednesday with the first pitch set for 4:30 p.m.
Southern Huntingdon 18 Bellwood-Antis 2
BELLWOOD-ANTIS 002 0 2-3-4.
SOUTHERN HUNTINGDON 440 10 18-9-0.
Multiple Hits: BA- O’Donald (2), SH-Schmidt (2), Wible (2).
RBI: BA- O’Donald 1, Rogers 1, SH- Wible 3, Robinson 3, Woodward 2.
SO: BA- Detwiler 0, SH- Hucheberger 1.
BB: BA- Detwiler 13, SH- Hucheberger 5.
WP: Hutchberger LP: Detwiler.
