By Keeghan Gittins
For The New Era
Sweet Home’s softball team got off to a slow start in Oregon West Conference play last week, dropping a road game 9-5 at Philomath Monday, April 14, falling 12-6 to now-No. 2 Cascade on Wednesday and then slipping by Newport on the road 5-4 Thursday.
Against Philomath, Sweet Home started off strong, tying up the game at 3 apiece in the top of the second. Addy Vannice stole home to get the Huskies on the board.
The Warriors gained the lead with three runs in the third inning, before increasing their lead to six in the bottom of the fifth.
Katriana ‘Peanut’ Harris started in the circle for Sweet Home, pitching a majority of the game, Harris gained five strikeouts. Jocelyn Fairchild took over for the final two innings, giving up zero runs, and recording two strikeouts of her own.
Sweet Home got 11 hits as a team, but just weren’t able to cash in on opportunities, strikeouts being one of their shortcomings, with nine.
“We need to make sure we have quality at-bats,” said Coach Emily Marchbanks.
Vannice and Hannah Sieminski led the team with two runs each, Sieminski was the leader at the plate with three hits.
Against No. 3 Cascade, the Huskies faced one of the three 4A Division teams that are still undefeated.
Harris finished with two RBIs and Sieminski led the team with three hits. Natalie Smith also had a pretty good game at the plate, with two hits, a run, and an RBI.
Despite that, Sweet Home wasn’t able to get on the board until the sixth, igniting and scoring five runs to close their margin to three runs. But the Huskies couldn’t build on their momentum and gave up four runs in the seventh, and only one of their own. Final score: 12-6.
On the road at Newport, the Huskies ended the first inning up one and extended their lead to three in the second.
The early contributions came from a double by Natalie Smith, which scored Vannice. Then Kaitlyn Kennedy scored on an error by the first baseman, and a single by Sieminski allowed Miley Smith to earn a run. Smith had three hits, two runs, and an RBI.
In the fourth inning, Sweet Home tacked on two more runs.
Fairchild and Harris split time in the circle, Fairchild pitching the first four innings and finishing with four strikeouts.
Newport closed to 5-3 in the bottom of the fifth, but Sweet Home battled to keep the lead.
“We have been working on staying mentally tough, throughout hard games,” Marchbanks said.
Harris pitched the final three innings, allowing only one more run, and striking out four more batters.
Sweet home gets two more chances at all those teams.
“I think our girls want another chance to play them both and get the opportunity to show both teams what we are capable of,” Marchbanks said.
She said the Huskies need to work on eliminating the errors they committed.
“I think we need to work on staying consistent in our fielding. We just need to keep trusting the process and working through our problems as a team and it will come together.”
This week Sweet Home is hosting North Marion at home Monday and Philomath on Thursday, both games starting at 5 p.m. The Huskies play at Stayton at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Next week They play at Cascade Monday, April 28, before hosting Newport on Wednesday, then traveling to North Marion on Thursday. All those games start at 5 p.m.