Costly Softball Loss for Lady Hatters Against Bensalem

Hatboro-Horsham High School didn't pick the best of days to come out flat Friday afternoon on the Lady Hatter softball diamond, the result being a costly 10-3 loss to Bensalem.

But there was a silver lining to the Lady Hatters' cloudy day when one of H-H's biggest rivals for a postseason playoff berth experienced an even costly loss on Friday.

Central Bucks East fell 3-0 to Abington — the last-place team in the Suburban One League/National Conference — on Friday, a day after a costly Thursday night loss to Pennridge in SOL Continental Conference play.

Hatboro-Horsham (8-7 overall, 7-6 in conference) trails CB East (8-8, 8-4) by a game and a half for fourth place as the Continental Conference winds down this week. Bensalem improved to 9-8.

Should the Lady Hatters win their final conference game on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. at the Hatboro Little League complex against last-place Central Bucks West, H-H can forge a tie for fourth in the final standings if CB East loses to Souderton and Central Bucks South squads that are fighting for the conference title.

HHHS and CB East split two games in the regular season, the Lady Hatters winning 7-4 on the road and losing 3-2 in 10 innings at home.

The game with CB West will be on senior night for Hatboro-Horsham, with the Lady Hatter program honoring three graduating players, Charlotte Coulson, Daria Edwards and Megan Hallock.

With non-conference games at beleaguered Norristown and Garnet Valley on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, Hatboro-Horsham has the opportunity to finish on a high note with three consecutive wins and an 11-7 record, while the Patriots are in serious danger of finishing with an overall losing mark.

North Penn coach Rick Torresani, the conference representative when District One holds its seeding and selection meeting and makes the playoff bracket later this week, said he expects five Continental Conference teams to make the field.

But if only four get in, the Lady Hatters would seem to hold a slight edge over CB East if the two teams are tied for fourth in conference play.

Hatboro-Horsham could have made its road quite a bit easier on Friday, but instead the Lady Hatters played their worst game of the season.

The game's start was delayed for almost an hour with Bensalem's bus getting lost on the way to Horsham. Several Lady Hatter players were also late, due to advanced placement testing at H-H that for some reason went beyond the normal school hours.

Still, the local cable access television station was on hand to record the event for future broadcast and the Lady Hatters held Bensalem scoreless with just a single and a walk through two innings as pitcher Lexie Campbell got off to a strong start.

But a lack of focus started to reveal itself in the bottom of the second when Hatboro-Horsham missed a golden opportunity to break on top.

Jen Cader drilled a hard grounder off the glove of Owl first baseman Chelsea Briggs and beat it out for a base hit and Jackie Locke followed with a top-spin looper over the heads of a pair of middle infielders and into short center.

But Cader got a bad break on the ball to make for a close play at second. She appeared to slide in safely, but the field umpire was also slow to get into proper position on the play, got himself screened and called Cader out.

Instead of first and second and no one out, the Lady Hatters quickly watched this promising inning fall apart when Locke was thrown out at second by Bensalem catcher Lauren Morrell on a close steal attempt and Lexie Campbell was fanned by Morrell's twin sister Jackie to end the inning.

A leadoff walk to Jackie Morrell to open the third came back to cost H-H a run. Carley Smith lined a single to center, with Jackie Morrell advancing to third on a throwing error and Jen Campbell cashed her in with another base-hit drive to center.

Lexie Campbell caught Briggs looking to strand runners at second and third to leave HHHS with a one-run deficit.

But things completely disintegrated in the fourth after Bensalem's Kate Reiss led off with a single, Kelly Nolan beat out a bunt and Jess Ferdinand was nicked on the elbow by a Lexie Campbell pitch.

Hatboro-Horsham's DeAnna Moyer appeared to have saved the Lady Hatters briefly when she made a spectacular, backhanded, running catch, banging into the right-field fence on a wicked drive from Jackie Morrell, snaring the ball just beneath the yellow plastic that trims the barrier.

When the ball left Jackie Morrell's bat, it looked like it might be a grand slam. But instead of a home run, or even a three-run triple, all the Owls got out of the blast was a sacrifice fly.

H-H coach Joe DiFilippo replaced Lexie Campbell with pitcher Kaeli Simmons, but two infield hits and dropped fly ball for an error accounted for four more runs in the inning and a 6-0 lead.

Hatboro-Horsham showed about its only life in the game in the bottom of the fourth, when Edwards doubled sharply down the left-field line, Cader knocked her in with a single, grounded wide of the third-base bag and a throwing error on Locke's sharply-hit bounder to short brought home Cader.

Trailing 6-2, the Lady Hatters needed to keep Bensalem down, but the Owls tacked on one run in each of the fifth and sixth off Simmons and two in the seventh off Brynn Griffith, finishing with 12 hits.

The only other highlight for Hatboro-Horsham came in the bottom of the fifth, with Griffith lowering the boom on a 3-2 pitch and crashing it over the left-field fence for her first varsity homer.

That made the game 7-3, but the Lady Hatters collected only a Griffith single the rest of the game.

Hard-throwing Jackie Morrell, who was mentored in the circle at one time by former Hatboro-Horsham junior varsity coach Brooke Muth, held the Lady Hatters to just six hits, while walking none.

Cader and Griffith were both 2-for-3 as the only H-H players with multiple hits.

It was also a tough day for the JV Hatters, who dropped a 3-1 decision to Bensalem.