ALTON – Monday's non-conference softball game between Hardin-Calhoun and Alton at Alton High was pretty even for the first five-and-a-half innings. The Warriors and Redbirds were tied at 1-1, having traded runs in the first two innings before Calhoun's Sydney Baalman (throwing for Grace Baalman, who was in Bloomington for the IHSA's All-State Academic Banquet Monday) and Alton's Abby Scyoc – both freshmen - settled in from the circle.
Then came the bottom of the fifth, which started when the Redbirds' Rachael McCoy led off with a triple to dead-center field and scored on a Sydney Hartman single; Hartman herself scored with two out when Tami Wong ripped a single down the left-field line as the Redbirds took a 3-1 lead, putting it away in the sixth when Tomi Dublo homered to right-center to give Alton a 4-1 win over the Warriors.
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The Redbirds improved to 12-5 on the year with the win; the Warriors dropped to 16-5.
“We're pleased with a few things,” said Redbird coach Dan Carter. “Abby Scyoc pitched a great game; we had a couple errors and a couple of girls got on, but she pitched a pretty good game. Offensively, it took us a little while to get going; the younger Baalman girl did a nice job, she moved the ball around real nice and kept us off-balance early in the game, but once we settled down, we put some runs on the board and finished off the game strong.
“It's always nice to win; at this level, we always want to be better today than we were yesterday. There are some things we're going to have to work on – we didn't bunt the ball very well today, although we got a couple down and they scored a couple of runs for us.”
The key hits came when the Redbirds needed them. “Tami Wong had a big hit for us,” Carter said, “Tomi Dublo had a great at-bat there, snapped back at the ball and drove it over the fence to give us some insurance going into the last inning. She's been doing that for us, and up and down the lineup, we're doing a pretty nice job; we're pretty pleased today.”
“We just didn't hit the ball today,” said Warrior coach Matt Baalman. “We had just two hits; with a pitcher like that (Scyoc), you've got to put 6-7 runs up every game; she's a nice pitcher, but she's not overpowering – we had a lot of bad judgment on the hitting part. We didn't wait for our pitch and didn't propel the ball; we had one ball hit to the fence and that may have been the only ball to the outfield.
“Syd had a really nice day; she had a lot of strikeouts and pitched a really good game; we had a lot of little errors, not bad errors, but some errors we've got to work on.”
Calhoun broke out on top in the first when Abby Baalman reached on an error, advanced on a grounder to first and came around to score on a grounder to short for a 1-0 Warrior lead; the Redbirds countered in the second when Ashlyn Belz walked, stole second and came around to score on an error to tie the game. It stayed that way until the two-run fifth for the Redbirds, with the Dublo homer adding to the lead in the sixth.
Scyoc pretty much took control for the Redbirds, giving up just two hits and striking out two but getting the Warriors to hit grounders to the Alton defense; she ran into trouble in the fourth, Emily Baalman reaching on an error and Sydney Baalman walking to put runners at first and second, but striking out Kyleigh Presley to end the threat.
Scyoc got the win for the Redbirds; Sydney Baalman took the loss, striking out 14 but conceding seven hits – six in the final two innings.
Alton hosts East St. Louis at 4:30 p.m. today, then visits Cahokia at 4:30 p.m Wednesday and O'Fallon at 4:30 p.m. Thursday; Calhoun is a Greenfield at 4:30 p.m. today and at Brussels at 4:30 p.m Wednesday before hosting Greenfield at 4:30 p.m. Thursday.
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