Sports

Gloucester Varsity Softball holds Undefeated Title After Two wins against Warwick

Reporter Leighann Harper

Lady Dukes Varsity Softball played their strongest opponent on Tuesday, April 23rd, and again on Thursday, April 25th.

In the first game, the audience knew that it would be the most intense game of the season. Our ladies’ score was 0-0 until the eighth inning. In school ball softball games for varsity, you always play seven innings unless one team run rules the other (gets up by ten runs before the fifth inning), and our ladies played through eight and a half innings of intense plays, strikeouts, close calls, and heads up defense to come out on top with a 1-0 score.

To score our run, Makenna Keyes (Junior) hit a single, putting her at first base with Malaika Rilee (Junior) up to bat. She bunted perfectly so that Rilee could advance to second, which meant that a base hit could hit her in. Senior Bridget Motley then came up to bat, and sure enough, her double brought in our only run and helped us toward winning the game.

In the last inning of the first game, we had already scored our point, and we were fighting hard to hold off the warwick girls and make sure they did not score. A few plays went by, and before our girls knew it, bases were loaded and we were terrified that a run would score. Then, quick as day, the batter up hit a forceful ground ball to the third baseman for our lady dukes, but to everyone’s surprise she fumbled it due to the speed of the ball, and the ball went on to our shortstop, Courtney Hall (Senior). The base runners were running, it was two outs, and we desperately needed an out to keep the run from scoring. The runner on first had gone to second, the one on second to third, and the one on third was scoring. Hall knew that she never could have made the throw to first, so instead, she made a heads up play: she quickly tagged the runner advancing to third and got the third out, winning the game.

The second time Gloucester played Warwick, it was another fast paced, petrifying game. After a few innings of holding each other off, a few hits went a long way, and Junior Laura Tobin’s aggressive baserunning caused her to score one of our three winnings runs. Our defense was solid, our hits were aggressive, and our team wanted to win the game more than anything in the world; With strong mindedness, our ladies game out on top.

Coach Lyndsay was ecstatic about the win, and he and his team are ready to face Menchville next week.