By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
DAYTON, Ore.– The Willamina softball team has created a knack for themselves in coming back from deficits early on in the season.
Down in Medford on Tuesday, they trailed Yreka 15-10 going into the fourth inning, only to come back to win 16-15. Saturday morning into early afternoon, it was no different.
The Bulldogs trailed 8-3 to Grant Union/Prairie City, the two-time defending 2A/1A State Champions, going into the bottom of the third inning. From there, however, Willamina began to claw back.
With a new pitcher in the circle, it’s a matter of buckling down defensively, and outside of that one eight-run inning in the third, the Bulldog defense did just that: Buckling down and allowing their offense to do what they do best to get back into the game.
“We know that they’re going to put the ball in play, so we have to do our job defensively. Limit the errors as much as possible and know that it’s going to happen and that it’s ok, but it’s how we are going to bounce back from it and do our job at the plate,” starts Willamina Head Coach Caitlyn Manley. “All of our games I feel like we’ve done a really good job at the plate of getting those runs and being aggressive baserunners to score and getting girls to score to make our runs.”
Over the course of the next three innings the Prospectors, who returned some offensive threat as well despite losing their pitcher in Drew Williams, were only able to score twice more as Willamina pulled them within three going into the bottom of the sixth inning down 10-7 to Grant Union/Prairie City.
At that point, the Bulldogs worked some magic as they did Tuesday against the Miners of Yreka and really got their offense going. Baserunning, putting the ball in play, so on-and-forth and Willamina started to plate runs. A lot of them.
17 batters later and what began as a three-run deficit was now a 20-10 lead in favor of the Bulldogs, who scored 13 runs in that bottom half of the sixth inning to close out their fifth-straight victory to start the season,
“A lot of it is keeping our attitudes in that mental game and not getting into our heads too much because once you get into your head, that’s when everything starts tumbling down and you get into that hole and it’s hard to climb yourself out of it,” said Bayleigh Leno. “A lot of it is keeping our heads up, keeping our mental game…We’re still getting the kinks out, our defense is pretty solid, but there’s still things we still need to work out. But other than that, we’re a pretty solid team,”
Leno and Madison Oelhafen each drove in four runs, Zoe Sickles drove in three runs for the Bulldogs in the victory. Leno led the offense with four hits while Bridgette Manley collected three hits, and Oelhafen, Sadie Risseeuw, and Brianna Buswell each had two hits apiece for Willamina, who will head to Jefferson Monday to open league play.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
