By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– Games like this will go a long way to help the continued development of the West Salem softball program. And they’ve already made some good progression to this point entering and exiting Wednesday’s tough 10-5 defeat to West Linn at West Salem High School.
For a young team, playing in unfamiliar spots and facing a Lions squad ranked tenth in 6A and a playoff team as well, the Titans were neck-and-neck with West Linn. At one point, West Salem led the Lions 3-2 going into the fifth inning. It was shaping up to be a nailbiter as the fifth inning started despite some growing pains that the Titans are still working on and through 11 games in.
But it was that fifth inning in which the Lions made their move. Taking advantage of six hits, including a three-run home run byMcKayla Castro, and some miscues by the West Salem defense allowed West Linn to turn a 3-2 deficit into an 9-3 lead by the time the top half of the inning was over.
“It was a good game, and they’re a good team. We made mistakes, and we had like four errors and probably a few more mental mistakes and mental errors. But that one inning killed us a little bit. When you give four errors, it is like giving another team four extra outs, and up to that point, we were playing well. It was one inning that blew up on us, and we couldn’t recover from it,” said West Salem Head Coach Ty Nicholson. “We’ll turn it around. They’re a good team, and we knew that going in, and we had to play well to beat well.”
And while some young teams would fade and call it a day, the Titans didn’t. They closed out what would be a 10-5 defeat strongly as they refocused and got back on track in the sixth inning. Forcing a four batter inning in the sixth and cooling the bats of the Lions down to one more run after their strong fifth inning.
Mya Ward hit a two run home run to get West Salem back on the board in the bottom of the seventh,creating some momentum for the squad going into their Saturday doubleheader over in Bend against Mountain View on Saturday afternoon.
“It was huge,” Nicholson said of the growth of his team to finish the game out strongly. “We got girls playing in spots they haven’t played before. Addison Lowery at third base, she made some great plays….she’s grown a ton. We’ve got girls playing in spots that we’re trying to figure out, and we got returners. In this sport, we need a team, and we need to be able to fill every spot, and we got to make sure we’re stepping up.”
“We do a really good job battling, and I feel like we don’t give up. That’s what I feel is special about our group,” adds Ward. “We know what we can do, we just got to stay in that mindset and take that to the next game and let it all go,”
Ward drove in three runs, and Lowery had a team-high three hits to lead the West Salem offense. Braeli Martin struck out three in four-and-two-third innings pitching.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
