By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The West Salem-McNary Softball game lived up to the hype on Friday afternoon at West Salem High School.
For seven long innings, the two squads who entered the game ranked well high in the 6A Top 10, battled. Battled in that defensive sense.
Lucy Duval and Ashlyn Witttenbel anchored their defense’s well. The duo went after batters and letting their defense work behind them. Timely hits were the only way that runs were coming across, and only three of them came across home in this one.
The Titans struck first off a Vivana Nunez double that brought Pacey Smith home. McNary would tie it up in the top half of the fourth inning thanks to a solo Home Run by freshman Autumn Siegel. It was tied at one going into the bottom half of the inning.
“It definitely brought the energy up, especially just having a good hit like that and everyone hyping me up, it was fun,” said Siegel. “Everyone did amazing. We had good defense. Our offense was good, we put it in play and they made great plays. We knew that it was going to be a great game and we battled.”
“We just enjoyed it. We just stayed relaxed and stayed loose, we had fun playing our game. When we made a mistake, we just flushed it and kept playing the game,” adds Duval. We need to work on our offense, our offense was slow in this game. Next game, we’re going to get on the bats sooner and keep the energy from it. Our energy was good.”
And the thing was, despite the offensive struggles, the energy was still there. The battle was still there with the defense. It became a chess match and who was going to get that one, maybe two, more runs to pull away. In a game like this, it was only going to probably be that one last run at the right moment late to ultimately decide who was going to win this Central Valley Conference match-up.
For the home squad in West, that came their way in the bottom half of the inning.
With two outs on the board, Aubrey Peil singled. and on the next at-bat, Kali Parks sent a ball to the right field fence that allowed Peil to score from first. Though Parks got tagged out trying to extend a double into a triple, the hit proved to be the deciding factor in what became a 2-1 victory over the Celtics to open CVC play.
“It was good for us to make those adjustments. I didn’t get that in the first at-bat, so it was nice to get up in the box and make that adjustment to get one. I have Kali behind me, so it was good to have her,” said Peil.
The defeat snapped McNary’s eight-game losing streak, but in defeat they were able to execute what they were wanting to do. It was just the Titans day on this particular day.
“They took what we were working on in practice this week and showed it today. We were working on ball-in quick from in the infield, hitting our relays and talking. So I’m really proud of our defense. West did a great job coming in during clutch moments,” said McNary Head Coach Briana Brewer.
The two will play again on April 29 in Keizer, but in the meantime, the Celts are at home against Beaverton on Monday while West Salem are at South Salem.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
