MONROE — For six innings of Friday’s Wesco 4A softball game between Snohomish and Monroe, the Panthers’ batters struggled to hit the ball out of the infield.
As it turned out, in order to win the game they only needed to hit the ball about two feet.
The Panthers used three bunt singles in the top of the seventh inning to rally from a 1-0 deficit and defeat the Bearcats 5-3.
Snohomish senior Alyssa Simons led off the inning with a walk, followed by three bunt singles by junior Natalie Campbell and sophomores Bailey Greenlee and Ruby Sugayan respectively. Sugayan’s single scored Simons to tie the game at 1-1. The Panthers added four more runs in the inning when Monroe starting pitcher McKenzie Schulz walked Rylie Wales with the bases loaded, hit both Amelia Bridgeman and Carmen Morrison with a pitch also with the bases loaded and sophomore Sami Reynolds added an RBI groundout.
“You get the leadoff runner on and you’re down one run,” Snohomish head coach Lou Kennedy said. “You’ve got to tie before you can win. Logic says we’ll bunt her over and I looked at who we had coming up hitting and we bunted and it was just the perfect bunt. It died just at the right moment.”
It worked with Campbell at the plate, so Kennedy stuck with his strategy with Greenlee coming to the plate. After she reached base, he tried a squeeze play with Sugayan and each one worked to perfection. Kennedy admits he didn’t expect each bunt to be a hit, he was simply trying to advance the runners and give his team a chance to tie and potentially take the lead.
“Those were just basically sacrifices to move them over, but they were perfect,” Kennedy said. “They were soft and dying and turf is a fast track. It’s fast for the ball, but it’s also fast for the runners. It worked out and all the sudden we’ve got no outs and the bases loaded.
For the previous six innings, Schulz had been nearly untouchable. She gave up a hit in the first inning to Simons and a single in the third inning to Morrison before giving up the three bunt singles in the top of the seventh.
“She was doing a good job,” Monroe head coach Mike Birch said. “Don’t walk the leadoff batter. That kind of set the tone in the top of the seventh. From there, I think that emotion of, ‘uh oh, what’s happening?’ I think that had something to do with walking a runner in and the two hit batters, which they were leaning in a little bit, but you’re never going to get that call.”
Despite having five runs cross the plate before the Bearcats had even recorded an out in the inning, Schulz managed to get Snohomish batters out in a row to keep her team within four runs.
The Bearcats made it interesting in the bottom of the seventh when Kacey Hvitved’s two-run double cut the deficit to two runs at 5-3, but Simons struck out two of the final three batters to preserve a win for Snohomish.
Simons pitched a complete game, giving up nine hits and striking out 12. Six of the nine hits she gave up came in first and seventh innings combined.
The Panthers improved to 7-1 in league and stayed in a first-place tie with Jackson. They also earned a season split with Monroe and moved a game ahead of the Bearcats in the standings.
“Having a split is really big,” Kennedy said. “The thing is with districts, you really want to find out how you can get in as the number one seed because the two (seed) and the three (seed) are going to have to play each other before they get to the one (seed). Being the one is going to be huge and that’s not going to be easy for anybody.”
At Monroe H.S.
WP: Alyssa Simons (7 IP, 9 H, 12 K). LP: McKenzie Schulz (7 IP, 4 H). Individual highlights: Snohomish—Ruby Sugayan (RBI), Sami Reynolds (RBI), Rylie Wales (RBI); Monroe—Taylor Durant (2-3), Kacey Hvitved (2B, 2 RBI). Records—Snohomish 7-1 league, 11-2 overall. Monroe 6-2, 12-2.
Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.
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