Millburn Softball Starts Season With Loss

The Miller girls dropped their home opener to the Columbia Cougar softball team on Wednesday afternoon at Miller Field. Millburn struggled to come up with timely hits all game, and lost in extra frames, 6-5.

In the top half of the eighth frame with the game knotted at five, Cougar short stop Kyrsten Van Natta knocked in the go-ahead and eventual winning run, squeezing a hard hit groundball past Millburn’s second baseman, scoring courtesy runner, Tiffany Major from second. With two outs in the inning, Columbia catcher Kaitlin Kling got the rally started with a base hit to leftfield (Major ran in her place) and Terry Seelbach kept the inning alive, battling back from an 0-2 count to force a walk.

“Louis has done a great job over there and I knew the walk was going to come back to hurt us, when we walked the ninth batter and the short stop comes up,” said Millburn head coach John Childs. “As soon as we walked her, I knew we were in trouble.”

“In practice I told them that the team that puts the most pressure on is going to be the team that wins,” said CHS head coach Lou Cicenia. “We knew going on the road, we had the opportunity to put the pressure on early, with Kyrsten leading off, getting her over to second and playing for the hit.”

After scoring a run in the first inning off of an RBI single from Ryan Glynn, the Cougar offense fell dormant until the top of the fifth inning. Columbia had just one base-runner from the second through the fourth innings, while Millburn built a 3-1 lead.

“We put up a good fight today, but we started out slow. I think we just need to keep our intensity that we ended this game with and bring it on to the rest of the season,” Van Natta said.

In the fifth inning, Van Natta came up with two on and two out and a sliding play by Miller right fielder, Rachel Hitzig, saved two runs and the lead for Millburn. But in the sixth inning, Columbia’s first three batters reached base via a base hit and two walks, loading the bags from Mariah Major, who closed the gap to 3-2 with a sac fly, scoring Glynn. The game tying run, scored by Cougar pitcher, Emily Schnorr, came across because of an error on Millburn’s first baseman.

“I was very pleased with our small ball, we did the little things that we have to do beause we don’t have the big boppers,” Childs said. “We just have to sure up the defense and we have to get the timely hit.”

Van Natta scored her second run of the game in the seventh inning, off of a Schnorr RBI double crushed deep to centerfield, giving Columbia a 4-3 lead. Samantha Guillen tacked on another score, knocking in Schnorr with a single to left.

“I thought the game went really well. We had a lot of energy on the field and on the bench,” Schnorr said.

That would’ve been the game, but a costly error on Columbia’s first baseman allowed Millburn’s Jen Fried to bring the Millers within one and a sac fly by Emily Beneroff plated the game tying run for Millburn.

After falling behind by a run early on, Millburn got a rally started in the bottom half of the third inning, behind two infield singles by Fried and Lydia Vollavanh. A Schnorr wild pitch plus a Vollavanh stolen base put runners at second and third with just one out. An error by Columbia’s catcher allowed Fried to score, though Vollavanh was thrown out at home trying to score afterwards. Beneroff picked up the first of her two RBI with a single into shallow right field. Emily Cross scored Millburn’s third run in the next inning on a wild pitch, staking them to a 3-1 lead.

“I’ve been in this too long and you never have enough,” Childs said about the two-run lead. “I knew they had some good girls who could hit the ball. I told the girls, it all came down to basically one thing: they got hits when they had girls in scoring position and we didn’t. I mean we basically tied it up because they made errors, we didn’t hit them in.”

Neither of the teams’ pitchers were particularly dominant on Wednesday. Schnorr struck out six Millers, gave up two earned runs, allowed seven hits and walked two.

Van Natta led the way with the bat, collecting three hits, three stolen bases, two runs and an RBI.

“Not only in the field is she all over the place, but she really creates a lot of havoc,” Cicenia said.

Millburn’s hurler, Danielle Kirchner, struck out four, walked five, allowed five earned runs and 12 hits. Both Vollavanh and Beneroff picked up a pair of hits to lead Millburn.

“I’m not going to blame the weather, but Danny doesn’t usually have a problem with the strike zone, but she struggled a little bit today,” Childs said. “It could’ve been that the ball could’ve been wet.”

Millburn hosts West Orange on Friday, while Columbia is in action again on Thursday in Montclair..