DUKE CENTER –– For the better part of Thursday afternoon, Portville (N.Y.) was the better softball team.
The Lady Panthers, though, just couldn’t get over their dismal first-inning showing. Host Otto-Eldred took advantage of several miscues, were aggressive on the basepaths and had four runners cross the plate in first inning of the 5-3 victory.
“I think it was a great game if you didn’t watch the first 25 minutes of it,” Portville coach Bill Torrey said. “I thought we battled hard. It’s tough to see the couple of errors that were costly early on.
After a scoreless top-half of the first, Otto-Eldred (5-5) got things rolling when Autumn Smith took a first-pitch offering from pitcher Syd Colligan (six hits, two strikeouts, two walks) into the side, then stole second and third base. Kirsten Renninger (1-for-3, double) followed with a high blooper just beyond the pitcher’s circle that dropped between three players.
Rachel Wolfe followed with an RBI on a fielder’s choice before pitcher Alyssa Shelander added an RBI-single. Another miscue on an infield pop up, this time off the bat of Haylee Frederick, allowed another runner to score. All told, four Lady Terrors crossed the plate on just one hit and greatly aided by the two errors and four stolen bases.
“The girls were very aggressive on the bases tonight,” Otto-Eldred head coach Roger Veilleux said. “They’ve been playing well the last three, four games. They’ve doing really well. The defense has been coming along. Not too many errors that really matter.”
With the win, the Lady Terrors move to 5-5, making Veilleux a happy man heading into the weekend.
“We’re the best .500 team you’re going to see all year,” Veilleux said.
Otto-Eldred added a fifth run in the fourth, while the Panthers (3-2) tacked on three in the top of the sixth.
“In high school sports,” Torrey said, “it’s real easy to hang on to those mistakes and I think they did a good job battling past that. If they catch those two fly balls, it’s probably tied or we’re up one. It’s a different story. It’s a disappointing, but it’s a learning experience. Better now than later.”
Despite giving up the early runs, Torrey was happy with the way his team responded and got back in the game.
“I was more so upset because that’s not something we normally see out of those girls,” Torrey said, “but I was very happy with the way they were able to shake it off. You can’t go back and change it. They let it go and made the plays from there on out.”
For Veilleux, the key was his team coming out ready to play from the onset to grab an early lead.
“They came out fired up and took advantage of [Portville] coming out flat a little bit,” Veilleux said. “We had a few spots where we could have scored a few more runs.”
Shelander limited Portville through the first five innings, facing two batters more than the minimum and allowing just a leadoff single in the first inning and a two-out single in the fourth. For the game, Shelander scattered five hits, while striking out four and walking two.
“She hit her spots all night,” Veilleux said, noting Shelander had some strong defensive backing from Frederick at second base. “She didn’t have a lot of strikeouts, but she was hitting where she needed too. She threw excellent tonight. We had excellent plays from our second baseman.”
Portville scored its three runs in the fifth courtesy of a leadoff walk by Jillian Hasnick (2-for-3), an error and savvy base-running. A liner to center field by Kara Howard (2-for-3) let Bryn Milne and Piper Slocum score to close the Lady Terrors’ lead to 5-3.
In the seventh inning, a diving stop by Frederick and grounder to Renninger resulted in two quick outs. Hasnick reached first on an outfielder’s drop then moved to second. With Milne at the plate representing the tying run, Shelander got her to swing at a two-strike changeup to end the game.
“We started off with two outs,” Torrey said. “It’s not undoable, but it’s tough. It was nice to get the runner on, steal second, maybe put the ball in play, something crazy happens. It didn’t go our way at the end, but that’s why you have to be better at the beginning.”
At the plate, Emily Smith was 2-for-2 with an RBI for Otto-Eldred.
The Lady Terrors play at Northern Potter on Monday.
