There was little to separate the Yough and Burrell softball teams Wednesday as the Buccaneers captured a win in 10 innings.
When the teams completed their season series at Yough on Friday, the Cougars went behind but stormed back behind a huge outing from Kylee Fisher to grab an important 10-5 win.
Burrell (5-4, 3-2 Section 1-3A) scored the first four runs of the game, but it only managed one more the rest of the way while the Cougars eventually found their footing.
Fisher highlighted an offensive barrage — the sides combined for 28 hits — by going 4 for 4 with three doubles and a home run that gave Yough (8-4, 3-2) its first lead of the day.
“I’m just seeing the ball right out of the pitcher’s wrist,” Fisher said. “As soon as I see it, I’m telling myself yes or no in my head. As soon as I saw (the home run pitch), I turned on it just like my three other ones.”
She wasn’t the only Cougar that was firing offensively. Six of the nine players in the lineup for Yough had multiple hits including Anna Lindner (three), Kierstin Odelli (two), Brooke Kowalski (two), Payton Jenkins (two) and Kenzie Smartnick (two). Fisher, Lindner, Erin Reisinger and Jaidyn Vay, who earned the win for Yough in the circle, each had two RBIs.
“I loved (our resiliency),” Yough coach Dutch Harvey said. “We were sloppy early on and that cost us, but I liked the way that we battled back. We kept on working and chipping away, and then finally we pulled ahead. We have to clean up some baserunning things, but that’s a huge win against a good section team.”
For Burrell, Tina Gural led the squad with two RBIs but took the loss on the mound. Sophia Gregg, Addy Wojtczak and Cayla Brothers also drove a run in each.
“I thought we played pretty well,” Burrell coach Brandon Daughtry said. “After going 10 innings with them a few days ago, we kind of tried to rest a little and rotate some people in. It’s two good teams playing two good games a couple days apart. If we play 10 times, we’ll probably split five and five.”
Burrell wasted no time as it took just three batters to score.
Shelby Novak opened the action with a single before Gregg hit a grounder to third that Smartnick threw over to second, but Novak beat her throw to put runners on first and second.
Wojtczak then pulled through for the Buccaneers with an RBI single to make it 1-0. Gural did the same on a single to left that made the score 2-0.
Brothers then accounted for the first Burrell out of the game, but it was a productive one as she drove in her squad’s third and final run of the first.
Fisher doubled for Yough, but she was the only Cougar to reach base before the first ended. After that, both teams got on the board in the second.
Vay found herself in trouble after Cierra Molnar, Harlow Nealer and Shelby Novak singled to open the second. But she did well to battle back and force three straight flyouts as only one from Gregg was deep enough to bring a run home.
Trailing 4-0, Jenkins and Lindner singled to begin the bottom of the second to set up Reisinger, who hit a two-RBI double to center that cut their deficit in half. Gural forced three outs from there to retire the side with a 4-2 lead.
Burrell was blanked for the first time in the third as it only managed one hit. Yough, on the other hand, pulled a run back after Fisher doubled and was brought home by a single from Lindner to make it 4-3 entering the fourth.
Burrell wasted no time extending its lead back to second, but Yough managed to slash it down and then pull ahead for the first time of the day.
First, Gural used a sacrifice fly to score Gregg. Then, Odelli hit an RBI single before Fisher managed another extra-base hit, this time clearing the left-field wall to score two runs and give Yough a 6-5 advantage.
That ended the day for Gural on the mound as Molnar took over the rest of the way. Gural gave up 11 hits and six earned runs in four innings of work.
“That home run helped our team so much,” Fisher said. “I think that it carried into our defense too. As soon as I hit that, I was like, ‘OK guys, let’s go, let’s keep going.’ ”
Both defenses showed off in the fifth, but the Cougars managed to tack on two more runs.
Vay had two runners on with one out, but she forced two groundouts as Kowalski made a great throw from short to get the final out on a close play. From there, Lindner was robbed by a great sprawling catch from Gural in right, but Yough pulled itself together and put two runners on for Vay, who had her first hit of the day on a two-RBI double that brought the score to 8-5.
Following the big hit from Vay, she found her zone on the mound. She only allowed one more hit the rest of the way and picked up her only two strikeouts in the top of the seventh. Yough piled on two more runs in the sixth as Kowalski hit a sacrifice fly, and Lindner added another RBI on a single that capped off the scoring at 10-5.
“She pitched better late in the game,” Harvey said of his ace. “But she got better as the game went on. You could see her spin rate start to come up, and that’s when she’s at her best.”
The squads are deadlocked in the Section 1-3A standings as they’re only trailing Mt. Pleasant at 5-0 in the conference. Up next for Yough is Deer Lakes on Monday. Burrell will host Mt. Pleasant the same day.
“We’ve been putting good at-bats together all year,” Daughtry said. “We want to make it difficult on pitchers, and we didn’t make it easy on Jaidyn today, but she settled in after we got a few early ones.”