HARDIN – It’s always a showdown when the Calhoun Warriors and Carrollton Hawks go at it. That rivalry continued Thursday afternoon on the softball field as Calhoun played host to a gigantic Western Illinois Valley Conference tilt.
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The Warriors struck first, but a five-run third inning from the Hawks propelled them to a 6-4 win. Carrollton runs its record up to 19-0 and 6-0 in the WIVC.
“It’s always tough to come here and play,” Carrollton head coach Travis Klingler said. “I thought we had a good game plan at the plate and executed. I’d like to have seen a little better defense, but we got the win, and a win’s a win.”
The Hawks coughed up six errors on Thursday. None of Calhoun’s four runs were earned.
Audrey Gilman drew a leadoff walk before Conley Klocke reached via an error. Anabel Eilerman tried to do a job, hitting into a fielder’s choice. A nice throw caught Gilman at home plate for out number one, but runners were still on second and third. That made it easy for Kiera Sievers to hit a sacrifice pop-up, allowing Klocke to score and make it 1-0.
Gilman was out on the mound for Calhoun, and she went three-up, three-down in the top of the second. The bottom half was when the Warriors tacked on two more runs.
Annie Wilson took a one-out walk, and then Gilman singled to put Wilson on second. Klocke came up to bat next and reached on an error after hitting a ground ball, scoring Wilson to double the lead. Lacy Pohlman got on thanks to a dropped pop fly, allowing Gilman to score.
The Warriors led 3-0 after two innings. But the lead didn’t last very long.
Courtney Waldheuser hit a leadoff single to get things going before Blake Driskill laid down a sacrifice bunt to send courtesy runner Abby Flowers to second.
After that, Carrollton’s bats came alive with six straight hard-hit balls. Lauren Flowers stepped up and hit an RBI double to cut the lead to 3-1. Vanna Holmes then singled to put runners at the corners. Hannah Uhles hit a ground ball and reached on an error, sending Holmes to third and Lauren Flowers to score.
Daci Walls then hit an RBI single that gave the Hawks the lead before Brookelyn Eilerman grounded out to score Walls and made it 5-3.
An inning that started with the bottom of Carrollton’s batting order proved to be the game’s deciding factor.
“Courtney Waldheuser, hitting in the eight hole, she had a great hit to lead it off,” Klingler said. “Blake [Driskill] got her bunt down, and that got it back around to the top. And then they just started hitting, scoring some runs, and it’s just kind of contagious with this group. They never give up. We saw that on Tuesday against QND, and I was happy to see it again today.”
This past Tuesday, Carrollton hosted IHSA Class 2A traditional power Quincy Notre Dame. QND opened the scoring in the top of the first to take a 1-0 lead, but the Hawks came back to tie it 1-1 in the fifth before scoring three runs in the sixth to take a come-from-behind 4-1 win.
“They’ve got a lot of confidence in themselves,” Klingler said. “They expect to win every game, and they want to win every game. And when you come with that mindset, you know it’s a good start.”
Uhles made it 6-3 with an RBI double that scored Lauren Flowers from second in the top of the seventh. The Warriors tried to mount a two-out rally in the bottom half after back-to-back errors. Anabel Eilerman reached on an error by the third baseman and then scored after Sievers reached via a dropped fly ball. But Uhles got the ground ball for the final out of the game.
Uhles led the offense, going 3-for-4 with two doubles and two RBI. She also pitched a complete game, giving up four unearned runs on four hits. She struck out five batters and walked two. She threw 107 pitches, 72 of them for strikes.
It was a bit tougher day for Calhoun’s ace, Audrey Gilman. She also threw a complete, 94-pitch game, giving up six runs, four earned, on 12 hits. She struck out two batters.
She had just pitched a complete game against Edwardsville the day before, throwing 107 pitches in a 4-2 loss to the Tigers.
“I’m very confident with what we did offensively today,” Calhoun head coach Ann Gilman said postgame. “It will also help when Audrey isn’t coming off a seven-inning ball game the day before. [Carrollton] can hit, I’m not going to take anything away from their ability to hit a ball, but I think if Audrey is fresher, maybe they don’t hit quite as many, and we’ll do some re-positioning and be better next time.”
According to Audrey’s coach and mom, it was her own choice to go back to back.
“She made that choice,” coach Gilman said. “When you’re going to play Edwardsville, you want to put your best team on the field. It was almost kind of a mirror image of last night and tonight. We just haven’t been coming up with the defensive plays that are going to be game changers.”
The back-to-back losses dropped the Warriors to 12-5 on the season and 5-1 in the WIVC.
“We played good ball in both games, other than a few hiccups here and there,” Ann Gilman said. “We are scoring runs, and that was what we struggled with out of the gate. We’re getting better and better every day.”
“We just didn’t come up with a few plays,” she continued. “We had some poor positioning, and that’s on us for not putting players in the right spots. We had an error in the inning where they scored five runs. So, we’re going to look at a few things, re-evaluate some positions, and work on a few things in practice that we didn’t finish off today.”
These two teams will inevitably see each other again. If not in the WIVC tournament, then probably in the postseason.
The two met last season in the sectional final, a game that Carrollton hosted and won 1-0.
Last year, the two teams were separated by sub-sectional. This time, they’ll both be in the same pool, meaning that the two will more than likely meet a game earlier in the sectional semifinals that Calhoun will host.
Postseason brackets will be released on Wednesday, May 7.
Until then, the Hawks jump right back into a five-game week on Friday against Williamsville and on Saturday with a double header against Highland.
The Warriors will play again at home on Saturday against Auburn at 11 a.m.
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