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EDWARDSVILLE - Great pitching and timely hitting are what the great teams from the good ones.
The Edwardsville Lady Tigers held their rivals, the Alton Redbirds scoreless in a 5-0 victory in a Southwestern Conference game at District 7 Sports Complex in Edwardsville on Wednesday afternoon.
Starting pitcher, Kay Swanson went four and one-third innings with three strikeouts, no walks and gave up five hits. She earned the victory and improved to 5-1. Freshman, Ryleigh Owens came on in relief and threw two and two-thirds innings of work to preserve the shutout for the Tigers who improve to 10-2 and 3-0 in conference play.
“To shut that team out is an awesome job for those two kids, especially with the errors that we had behind them to still put up the shutout is a huge accomplishment because [Alton] can flat out hit,” Edwardsville head coach Lori Blade said. “They made the plays that they needed to make. We’ve been error-prone lately, but we made the plays when we had to make them. It’s a great win for us. We’ve come a long way, and we’ll continue to get better, and we’ll clean it up.”
The Redbirds who came into the day averaging ten runs per game and despite putting ten runners on base were never able to push across a run. They fell to 9-4 and 3-1 in the SWC. It was also the first time they’ve been blanked this season, and the coincidentally the last team to shut them out was to Edwardsville, 15-0 last year on May 1.
Abby Scyoc hit a leadoff triple in the top of the second inning, but Alton proceeded to hit three straight groundouts and stranded her. In the fifth and seventh innings, the Redbirds the loaded the bases but failed to get hits or a sacrifice fly of any kind when they needed them most. In total, they stranded ten base runners.
Scyoc and Tami Wong each tallied two hits for the Redbirds.
“We were never able to get that big hit, and they got the big hits when they needed them,” Alton head coach Dan Carter said. “You gotta do a better effort of trying to scratch some runs across. We had the bases loaded twice and missed the opportunity earlier with a leadoff triple. With that being said they did everything right for the most part. They kept themselves in the ballgame. I thought it was very well played and very well pitched.”
With two outs in the bottom of the third inning, Alton’s junior ace, Alyson Haegele was breezing along until Edwardsville’s best hitter, Maria Smith knocked a double into left field. After Katherine Bobinski-Boyd drew a walk, Moe Kastens and Lexi Gorniak hit back-to-back RBI singles to give the Tigers a 2-0 lead.
In the following inning, Sydney Lawrence knocked a pinch-hit RBI double off the left field wall. Two batters later, Smith belted her fourth home run of the season, a two-run blast to make it 5-0 Edwardsville.
Smith and Mackenzie Owens each finished 2-for-3 at the plate while Kastens went 2-for-4.
“Maria did what Maria does,” Blade said. “She bounced right back. Right now we have a good mentality at the plate and some confidence going. That’s what we need upper-class kids to do in that situation. They threw a good pitch to her in the first inning, and she bounces right back and gets something to hit later.”
Haegele threw three and two-thirds innings while allowing five runs on six hits. She struck out four batters and walked one, and saw her record move to 4-2.
In the fifth inning, Alton loaded the bases with one out and Blade decided to remove Swanson for Ryleigh Owens. The lefty freshman calmly struck out Abby Sullivan and Ashlyn Betz to end the inning. She also got out of another bases-loaded situation in the seventh but managed to strike out Lynna Fischer looking to end the game.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
