Wawasee Softball: Fretz Tosses No-Hitter
LIGONIER — And the beat goes on.
The Wawasee softball team continued its hot start to the 2016 season by dismantling yet another opponent Tuesday night. The Warriors needed just five innings to down West Noble, scoring a 10-0 victory highlighted by a no-hit performance from Meghan Fretz.
Fretz did all five innings of work for the Warriors in the circle, tossing 65 pitches in total. She recorded 12 strikeouts, a season high for the team so far, and threw 45 strikes total.
Fretz kept West Noble off the bases until the bottom of the third when Michaela Jones drew a walk. Jones was gunned down trying to steal second by Wawasee catcher Danielle Gunkel on the very next pitch, effectively ending the only true scoring threat the Chargers had in the game.
The throw from behind the plate may have been Gunkel’s defensive highlight of the night but she did most of her damage in the batter’s box. The senior was 4-4 on the night with two RBIs and two runs scored.
“Fretz pitched well tonight and we had no errors as a team” began Wawasee coach Jared Knipper. “We talked about it before the season, if our kids can avoid those mistakes and our pitchers aren’t putting extra kids on base then there are not many games that we should lose.”
Wawasee’s offense got going early as Kylee Rostochak knocked in a pair of runs on a single in the top of the first inning. Rostochak led the team with three RBIs and had three total hits.
The visitors racked up 13 hits as a team, Gunkel leading the way with four. Seven Warriors recorded at least one hit in the game while eight reached base.
Amber Lemberg scored twice on two hits. Hannah Haines and Madie Wilson each scored once while Allissa Flores led the team with three runs scored.
Wawasee (3-0) had its game with Elkhart Central on Thursday cancelled due to a Central scheduling conflict, which means the Warriors won’t see the game field until after next week’s spring break.
“This is always the struggle,” said Knipper. “Almost every kid is going somewhere for vacation, I’m going on vacation. The only coach that will be here is coach (Kenny) Gunkel. So, you just cross your fingers that they throw a little bit while they’re gone. We’ll show up that Monday and see what happens. That’s always been our Achilles’ heel, coming back off of break. We’ll practice early Monday morning and see what happens.”
Wawasee will host Fairfield that Monday, April 11, in a rematch of last year’s sectional semi-final which the Falcons won 3-0.