Sports
St. Charles Pirates Pull Out Extra-Inning Win to Take Down Zumwalt East
Lions see early lead evaporate in loss to St. Charles.
The Pirates softball team overcame a two–run deficit to defeat the Lions on Tuesday in a Gateway Athletic North Conference contest at Zumwalt East.
“We’ve been talking for weeks about not giving up,” St. Charles head coach Steve Jones said after the 4-3 victory. “I think they took it to heart.”
The Lions held a 3-0 lead in the third inning thanks to a fast start. Kristin Mikel’s one-run double in the first gave East a 1-0 lead. The Lions scored their second run in the third when pitcher Nikki Taylor grounded out and Carol Ann Weiler ran home from third. Mikel’s double in the third gave the Lions a three-run advantage.
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But it wouldn’t take long for the Pirates to mount a comeback. Katelyn Kuhn’s RBI double in the fifth made the score 3-1. Two unearned runs in the seventh tied the game up.
“You have to make them make the play,” Jones said on the unearned runs. “It doesn’t do any good to stand up there and look at strikes. I tell them to go up there and get a bat on the ball and you never know what’s going to happen. We put it in play and good things happened.”
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The Lions failed to score any runs in the bottom of the seventh. They stranded one runner, Weiler, who singled earlier in the inning. With the contest still tied up at three runs at the end of the seventh it went into extra innings.
Kimmie House’s one-run double in the eighth gave St. Charles a 4-3 lead. Mikel, who went 3-for-4 in the contest, and Megan Elder both singled in the bottom of the eighth for East, but were stranded on base at the end of the inning to end the game.
“They had one more hit and one less error and that’s the game,” East head coach Steve Loutzenhiser said. “I think our pitcher (Taylor) threw good enough to win. We just didn’t get the timely hitting and we had a few defensive miscues.”
The Pirates banged out nine hits against Taylor. East had eight hits against St. Charles pitcher Sammi Jo Grey.
St. Charles improves to 3-9 and 2-2 in the GACN with the win. Fort Zumwalt East drops to 8-7 overall and 1-2 in the league.