A frenetic week

Jake Baumgartner, Staff Reporter

Senior Kaylee Sheridan watches the ball fly after hitting a line drive against Winfield.
Kayla Schoenig
Senior Kaylee Sheridan watches the ball fly after hitting a line drive against Winfield.

The past week has been a long, tiring week for the Lady Spartans softball team. The season picked up a serious pace with back-to-back games on Sept. 2-4. If three games in three days wasn’t enough, the team also played a tournament this weekend with a 2-2 record.

The first game on Sept. 2 was against Fort Zumwalt West, was added to the list of games that were cancelled due to heat. The game against Fort Zumwalt North on Sept. 3 was a hefty loss for the Spartans with a score of 17-9. Senior Satiah Duval says the Spartan defense is a contributing factor to the losses.

“Our offense, I would say, is great,” Duval said, “Our outfield could use some work.”

Duval said that while the team has a number of talented players who have the ability to play the outfield, but the pieces are not fitting together just yet.

The final game was against Francis Howell North and the Spartans took home a win with a score of 5-4. According to senior Kristen Kolkmeyer, as the game might have been a win, the Spartan’s performance fluctuated.

“In the beginning we were winning 3-0,” Kolkmeyer said. “Then we had a couple innings where we didn’t do so well, and they began to catch up.”

The Spartans were able to hold off the Knights after their rough innings to win the game.

After last weeks triple threat leading the team to a 1-2 win/loss spread, the team had a chance for redemption as the Troy tournament that was cancelled three weeks ago took center stage for softball teams all around the area.

The first team the Spartans faced was Palmyra, and they took the first win of the tournament with a score of 9-8. After defeating Palmyra, the Spartans faced off against Lafayette, the No. 2 ranked team in Missouri. The Spartans were beaten down with a score of 7-1.The team’s next game was against Bowling Green, and with a score of 8-2, and a home run from senior Becca Stocker, the Spartans took another victory.

For the final game of the day, the Spartans faced off against Warrenton, another top-ranked team.

“We were able to beat them last year, but it was a close game,” Kolkmeyer said.

The team was able to bring in two runs in the first inning thanks to an RBI by Kolkmeyer, but they were the only runs that Spartans were able to bring in against Warrenton.

“The innings after scoring those two runs were rough,” Stocker said. “The rest of the innings were full of errors.” The final score was 9-2.

The team’s record currently stands at 3-4 and hopes to bring in more wins this week with a game against Timberland today, then Troy on Thursday, and another tournament on home turf this weekend.