By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SCIO, Ore.– The Dayton softball team put the ball in play a lot against Scio.
They treated the matchup as a revenge game and struck quickly, plating two runs right away. With Rachel Baumholtz in the circle, the Pirates’ defense took over from there, delivering back-to-back scoreless innings to start the game. Meanwhile, the offense added to the lead in the top of the second, pushing Dayton ahead 3–0 before the Loggers broke through in the bottom of the third.
It was 3-1 Pirates at this point. But then, things began to turn in favor of Dayton.
The hits kept coming and they didn’t stop for Dayton starting in the fourth inning. The Pirates scored nine of the game’s next 11 runs to pull away from the Loggers in the 12-3 victory. Chupp led Dayton with five hits and 4RBI’s and Emmy Riley collected another three hits as the Pirates saw four players with multi-hit games. Charly Upmeyer came in during the fifth inning in relief. Her and Baumholtz combined to strike out 14 batters in the victory.
“Our pitchers (Baumholtz and Upmeyer) did a pretty good job executing. Our defense, we were always communicating and I think our bats showed and were aggressive. I think that really showed today,” said the Pirates Gabby Chupp. “Our bats did a good job helping out. We put the pressure on them in the first inning and we did a good job keeping that going throughout the seven inning.
“I think we made it count today and it showed that we’re here not to mess around. We’re going for something bigger than league, we’re really going for a State Title.”
It was those timely hits and which defense limited those that proved to be the difference. Dayton got those timely hits and got those timely stops defensively to slow down the Loggers, but it’s something that Scio will look to sharpen up as they head to Willamina on Friday and into next week.
“We’ll get back to work and get better. It’s a different team this year, so we’re trying to fill some things out and we’ll get into a groove and we’ll be fine,” said Scio Head Coach Jim Mask. “Timely hitting. We got girls on base, we had to hit them in. Making a few plays here and there. They hit the ball really well with people on base today, I don’t know how many two-out RBI’s they had, but they were a lot of them. We got to get some of those, we got to stop some of those and we’ll get better as we go.”
Zoe Ferebee hit a solo Home Run for the Loggers, her and Mae Ferrando each drove in runs in the defeat with Cam Dalke collecting two hits to lead Scio in that category.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
