The Wawasee Warriors pulled off a bit of a softball shocker against the Warsaw Tigers.
After losing 12-1 back on April 14 in Syracuse, enducing the 10-run mercy rule in the fifth inning, the Warriors responded Wednesday by defeating the Tigers 3-2 on their home field."We've been up-and-down a lot this year," Wawasee coach Cory Schutz said. "I thought our good team showed up today. We played well. We played well defensively, hit our spots well on the mound and hit the ball hard, for the most part."
Wawasee outhit Warsaw 11-5 in the game, as Wawasee freshman Aubrey Mroz rebounded from her earlier outing against the Tigers, in which she gave up 17 hits and eight earned runs, to get the road win.
"She did a little better job today of keeping them off-balance with her change-up early," Schutz said of Mroz, who pitched all seven innings, giving up five hits, while striking out three. "She just did a good job of mixing it up at spots when we needed her to. They got a lot anxious at times, and we said we were going to take advantage of it."
The Tigers' anxiety at the plate is understandable, considering they entered the game with back-to-back shutout home losses in Northern Lakes Conference play. On Friday, the Tigers were shutout 1-0 against Concord, before losing 5-0 Tuesday against Elkhart Memorial.
Warsaw did pick up a win in a doubleheader at Fort Wayne Carroll, defeating Carroll 10-0 in the first game, but losing to Roncalli, 4-3 in the second.
After opening the NLC with a 5-0 mark, the lack of offensive output in their last three conference games, have left the Tigers with a 5-3 NLC record.
"It's something we're going to be doing (today), because we haven't been able to have a hitting practice," Warsaw coach Tanya Kempton said of working on her team's hitting. "We've been having games and games, but we'll have our hitting practice and get through some things. I think some of it is just confidence. We have a few people hitting, but we need the whole team hitting."
Through the first five innings of Wednesday's game, the only Tiger hitting the ball was senior Heather Shepherd, who had both of Warsaw's hits going into the bottom of the sixth inning.
While Warsaw was struggling to hit, Wawasee was doing alright against Warsaw sophomore pitcher Kaitilin Gruenewald. Pitching in place of injured senior Kelcy Martin, Gruenewald allowed five hits through four innings, but didn't allow a run to cross the plate. In the fifth inning, that changed.
After Wawasee junior Taylor Goshert reached on a Warsaw error, freshman Mattia Rostochak followed with a double. With runners at second and third, freshman Jonna Wiggs then put down a bunt, which the Tigers used to attempt to pick off Goshert at third. When that plan failed, Wawasee had the bases loaded with no one out.
While things could have gotten out of control for Warsaw, Wawasee plated just two runs out of the situation, with Goshert scoring on an RBI-fly out by senior Angie Beer and Rostochak scoring on an RBI-single by junior Ashley Sharp.
Already in front 2-0 in the top of the sixth, Wawasee put another run on the board when freshman Ashley Truman was driven in by a single off the bat of Goshert, upping the lead to 3-0.
"We really thought we'd be strong one through nine," Schutz said of his lineup, which produced hits from six of its nine batters. "Obviously, not everyone's gonna hit .500, but we figured we could be competitive at each spot in the order."
In the bottom of the sixth, Warsaw finally got something going.
Following a leadoff double by senior Tera Clark, she later came around to score after stealing third and catching Wawasee napping on a pop out by sophomore Kelci Freds. Following Freds' out, senior Allison Reichard then blasted a Mroz pitch over the center-field fence, narrowing the gap to 3-2 with one out.
"We start building, but then it was just a little too late," Kempton said about the Tigers' sixth inning performance.
With the team down just a run, Warsaw managed just one more hit in the inning, killing the rally and any threat of taking the home win.
"What we're working on is confidence and team building," Kempton said. "We need everybody working together and just gonna try out different hitting strategies."
Warsaw may be working on confidence building, but getting a much-needed NLC win may do just that for Wawasee.
"I hope they take this for what it is, which is a real good win against a good team," Schutz said of his team, which improved its NLC record to 2-6 with the win. "We had a bad first half to the season, so now it's the second half and I told them, 'Let's finish strong.' That's means we gotta win the rest of the conference games. But if we play well, and have the confidence, good things will happen."
Wawasee's next test to see if that confidence is there will be Friday at Elkhart Memorial at 7 p.m., while Warsaw will look to get is bats going Friday at Goshen, beginning at 5 p.m.
