Warsaw’s Lauren Eastwood makes a throw Monday in the sectional contest against Goshen. InkFreeNews photo by Mike Deak

By Mike Deak
InkFreeNews

MIDDLEBURY – It just wasn’t Warsaw’s night.

Seemingly nothing the Tigers did Monday worked in its favor in the opening round of the IHSAA Class 4-A Northridge Softball Sectional as Goshen knocked Warsaw out, 9-0.

“We had a lot of individual chances, but we couldn’t piece anything together,” said Warsaw head coach Kevin Dishman. “We had a lot of hard hit balls that went right to them. Our tablesetters couldn’t find a way on base, and we made too many mistakes in the field. Just a recipe for disaster.”

Warsaw had a chance to break out in the first after Kali Ousley walked and Lindsey Bradley reached on a dropped third strike. But a strikeout ended the threat, and for the Tigers’ side of it, fortunes went downhill quickly.

What doomed Warsaw in its only appearance of the season on Northridge’s artificial turf layout two weeks ago reared its head again. A bouncing ball over the center fielder’s head allowed Reghan Yoder to take an extra base, and then came around to score on a two-out single by Jenna Roll, who beat out a throw to first.

Another misplayed ball in the third off the bat of Tyra Marcum allowed two runs to score, and a wild pitch skipped around the backstop, allowing Marcum to race home to make the score 4-0.

A ball off the facemask of Marcum loaded the bases in the bottom of the fifth, and Roll sat on a fastball that was sent flying over the right fielder’s head all the way to the wall to unload the bases and deflate Warsaw’s balloon.

“The key of the game is execution, and we didn’t do that at all tonight,” Dishman said. “We take failures at the plate out to the field, and that’s when things start snowballing. When you go down 4-0 like we did, it was over. You can cheerlead and jump around all you want, it just didn’t do any good. Once we got behind, it was over.”

Marcum, Yoder and Klair Sweet all had two runs scored and Roll’s four RBI sends the RedHawks (18-10) to the sectional semis on Wednesday, where it will meet Elkhart (10-9). Northridge (23-3-1) and Concord (8-17) meet in the other contest.

Liz Ramirez allowed five hits and walked none while striking out 10 in the complete game shutout for the RedHawks. In her final game for the Tigers (17-9), Tori Tackett struck out eight in the complete game effort.

Bradley had a double in her final game for Warsaw, which had at least a trio of at-em balls Goshen welcomed into waiting mits, including Bradley’s final ringing swing that went right to Ramirez for an easy putout.

“This has been a very long season for Lindsey, she made it through four years here,” Dishman said. “I’ll say this about the team, they did not let all the distractions of school and the pandemic take away from what they wanted to do this season with softball. They worked hard for us. We’re still really young, a lot of nines and tens on the roster. They’ll go to travel ball and then back to school in a couple months and we’ll start this whole thing over again.”