Baseball and Softball Eliminated in First Round of Post-season

 

Bringing an end to their seasons for the year, both South Fork’s Baseball and Softball teams bowed out of the first round of post-season play last Tuesday with the Lady Cubs falling 10-5 to Geyserville on the road and baseball being upset by Laytonville 11-3 at home.

Softball

Pleased with how her team played over all, head coach Lisa Todd said, “We were too timid in the box. We weren’t swinging at the strikes.”

Senior Victoria Van Meter walked and scored on an RBI knock by senior Gabi Moore in the first inning to get South Fork on the board. The Lady Cubs scattered four more runs over the next 6 innings, with sophomore Kylee Savio, junior Kylie Girard and Moore getting RBIs.

According to Todd, Geyserville had two big innings that the Lady Cubs could not bounce back from. “We played tough defense and prevented another big inning by holding them with the bases loaded and nobody out.”

Savio and Moore each had two hits, freshman Jasmine Todd had a knock, and Girard had a double and scored a run.

“We never gave up and battled to the end,” said Coach Todd. “It was a tough season for us this year but we hung in there and I’m proud of them for that. It’s tough to lose games by a large amount and keep your head up and stay strong,” she added.

Four seniors will be leaving the team. Van Meter, Moore, Sabrina Miclette and Sugee Page will be graduating next month.

Baseball

In what head coach Andy Olsen called “a perfect storm of mistakes” the Cubs beat themselves by committing 8 errors, allowing Laytonville to score 5 unearned runs in the 3rd inning and three more in later innings.

The Laytonville pitcher threw 4 2/3 innings of no-hit ball, and on two occasions when the Cubs got basehits, they were called out on rally-killing baserunning gaffes.

“Give Laytonville credit,” said Olsen. “They wanted it.” Indeed the Laytonville dugout was lively and loud. Cub batters were over confident against the slow-throwing Laytonville pitcher and were swinging for the fences, causing pop-up after pop-up from the heart of the order.

Luck was not on South Fork’s side either, as every hard hit ball was right at a Laytonville fielder.

The team will lose two seniors to graduation, Ipo Savoie and Levi Humphrey. The majority of the players will be back next year, and Coach Olsen is counting the tough experience of the upset being a learning opportunity for his players.