By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
KEIZER, Ore.– The West Salem softball bats were slow to start their Central Valley Conference game with McNary Friday afternoon. But when they came around, they came around and changed the whole dynamic of the contest through the final three innings of the game.
The Titans trailed the Celtics 2-0 going into the fourth inning in what was making out to be a defensive battle instead of the 15-5 result that we would ultimately have by game’s end. The two runs we did have at this point came way off of a Fielder’s Choice in the bottom of the first inning and a score off a passed ball.
“This game, we’ve been looking towards it all week,” starts McNary’s Karah Miller. “We were so excited for it, and our energy was great the first inning, second inning, and then things began to fall off, and we need to work on being consistent with energy. It was a big game, but at the end of the day, you win some, and you lose some.”
West Salem started to build some momentum around the third inning when the game was still a 1-0 game, but it wasn’t until the fifth inning that they finally saw things come into their favor.
It all started with a four-run fifth inning that put the Titans ahead 4-2. The Celtics responded with a three-run inning of their own to regain the lead up 5-4 going into the sixth inning. Now, with both offenses coming around, it may have been the start of a trading of the runs kind of game.
But it was that sixth inning where West Salem put the hammer down and really put some serious distance between themselves and McNary. Seven runs were scored in the top half of the sixth inning, turning that one-run deficit into an 11-5 lead by the time they took back to the diamond for defense.
“Just having that fight deep down in all of us and just really feeding off of each other’s energy with hits. Stringing everything together the way we know we can, that’s definitely what helped us pull back ahead,” said West Salem’s Olivia Nunez. “We just need to build off of this win right now, we can’t let up, and we just gotta keep it up for the rest of the season.”
Both teams had entered the contest on the Top 8 in 6A, McNary sat sixth, and West Salem was seventh when the game began. But the Titans were too much on this day, holding the Celtics scoreless in the sixth and seventh innings and adding four more runs in the top half of the seventh to help seal the 15-5 victory.
Nunez had a game-high 5RBI’s in the win, Braeli Martin drove in four runs along with seven strikeouts for the Titans on Friday. Miller led the Celtics with 2RBI’s, and Macy Fessler led McNary with two hits.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
