The Huskies shut out Harrisburg on the road Friday in softball, while Gladstone handed them their first loss of the year in a shutout on Thursday in Sweet Home.
Sweet Home finished the non-league portion of its season 4-1. It opened league play at Elmira Monday and plays Sisters at home on Wednesday and La Pine at home on Friday.
Sweet Home 7, Harrisburg 0
Emily Marchbanks pitched a no-hitter, striking out 12 and walking just three, to help lead the Huskies to a 7-0 win at Harrsiburg.
The Huskies got their bats going early, scoring four runs in the first inning. They followed up with a run each in the second, fifth and sixth innings.
Collecting a single each were Katie Virtue, Natalie Thorpe, Molly Dadey, Caytlin Gillespie, Molly Fisher and Mackenzie Virtue. Marchbanks hit a double.
Defensively, the Huskies were back after their defensive missteps against Gladstone.
“They hit the ball a little bit,” said Coach Shane Cochran said of Harrisburg. “But we just made the plays. We didn’t have any errors.”
At the plate, “we came out a lot more confident,” Cochran said. “Even the balls we hit that weren’t base hits, we managed to advance runners most of the time.”
Heading into league play, “I think we’re off to a great start,” Cochran said. “We’re working a lot on our competitiveness and our confidence and practicing hard. We’re looking good. We’re going to shape up really good for league. We just need to build a little more confidence in the batter’s box.”
Sweet Home 401 011 0 – 7 7 0
Harrisburg 000 000 0 – 0 0 0
Gladstone 4, Sweet Home 0
The Huskies tripped up defensively following a long pitchers duel and gave up two runs to Gladstone, losing 4-0 at home.
“That was a pitchers’ duel the whole game,” Cochran said. “Basically three up, three down for both teams.”
The Huskies made a couple of key errors in the sixth inning, letting Gladstone score twice, he said. In the seventh, The Gladiators put a runner on base, and another hit a homerun to score two more runs.
Marchbanks gave up two hits and two walks and struck out five batters.
“Defensively, they looked really well and they’ve been doing really well, up until the couple errors in the sixth inning.”
At bat, the Huskies were off and on, Cochran said.
“We didn’t look very confident when we went up to bat.”
The Huskies got some girls on base, but they couldn’t connect them to home plate.
Gillespie, Katie Virtue and Sarita Zanona each had singles.
Gladstone 000 002 2 – 4 2 0
Sweet Home 000 000 0 – 0 3 4