Lady Rockets blank West Greene
JEFFERSON — As prophets go, West Greene softball coach Bill Simms makes a very good, um, softball coach.
But, Simms did offer this tidbit just after his team had lost a 3-0 Section 1-A softball game at Jefferson-Morgan:
“You can’t win games 0-0,” Simms said. “When you don’t score, there’s no way you can win.”
Taking that logic a step further, you can’t win when you don’t get hits and Jefferson-Morgan’s Maddie Ludrosky made sure the Lady Pioneers didn’t score.
Ludrosky struck out 14 batters and gave up only two hits, Bailey Bennington’s lead-off double in the sixth inning and Emily Goodwin’s infield single in the fourth, to lift the Lady Rockets (5-2, 3-1) over West Greene (5-3, 2-2).
“You’ve got to tip your cap to her, Maddie was sharp today,” Simms said. “We’ve got to put the ball in play better than we did today. And, J-M hit the ball pretty well and capitalized when they had people on base.”
The Lady Rockets made the most of their six hits by squeezing across two runs in the third inning and one more in the fourth. Freshman Madison Renner surrendered all three runs on five hits. She gave way to Bailey Bennington after issuing a bases-loaded walk to Reagan Rush for the last J-M run. Bennington struck out seven of the nine batters she faced, but the dye had already been cast.
In fact, it could have been much worse, according to J-M coach Tony Barbetta.
“It’s always a close game when we play them,” Barbetta said. “But, we had opportunities to score more runs this time and didn’t.”
Indeed, the Lady Rockets stranded two in the third and three in the fourth and actually left at least one runner on base in every inning but a 1-2-3 fifth. Three of their six hits were doubles, one each from Rush, Morgan Simkovic and Madison Dupont.
Renner was cruising along until issuing a two-out walk to Camryn Dugan in the third inning and Dugan came around to score on Simkovic’s double to right-center. Simkovic scored on Ludrosky’s single to center.
An inning later, Brooke Diamond singled and took second on an error before Autumn Tedrow walked and Morgan Gamble reached on an error. Rush drew a walk to score Diamond.
That, of course, was plenty for J-M, who basically put a stranglehold on second place in Section 1-A.
“This game worried us,” Barbetta said. “It was originally scheduled so long ago, but kept getting rained out. We practiced a good bit for Bailey. They are going to be a team to deal with the next few years.
“This is a really big win for us. When you shut a team out, you’re playing good ball. This puts us in a good place because we are pretty much locked in second place.”
The rematch at West Greene is set for Tuesday, April 28.