Ash, McCabe send shots out of the park
Following up on impressive preseason scrimmages, the Lady Indians took to the softball field for Tuesday’s opener and made short work of Virginia’s Eastern Shore conference champions, Nandua. The seven-inning, 7-2 victory locked up a strong start to Indian River’s season for head coach Mark Browne and, even more so, winning pitcher Katelyn Null.
Coastal Point • Jesse Pryor
Brittany Steele finishes out the game against Nandua after Katelyn Null opened the game with six strikeouts in four innings and only allowed one run.
Null took to the mound to open for the Indians, throwing six strikeouts in four innings and allowing only one run.
“She does a very nice job throwing strikes for us,” said Browne. “She usually does a great job of not getting herself into too much trouble. Our emphasis is on making plays behind all of our pitchers. We don’t expect our pitchers to strike everybody out and we don’t depend on that, and we work on having a good defense behind them.”
Null was able to keep composure through the start of the game, paving the way for an IR win.
“Just like today, we had a first-and-third situation with two outs,” Browne said, referencing one of Null’s strikeouts under pressure. “I had every confidence [in Null]. A lot of teams have a play where the runner stops at second and tries to score the runner on third. We work on the first-and-third play a lot, and that was just one indication today where we work behind the pitchers.”
Southpaw pitcher Brittany Steele finished out the game for the Indians.
After trailing in the first, 0-1, the Indians answered back, as catcher Hayley Brennan’s shot to center field brought second baseman Abi Buchler around for the early tie. Brennan made it back to home plate on a wild pitch, to give the Indians the lead by the second. Brennan booked it around the bases again in the third before right-field junior Brittany Ash and shortstop Lindsay McCabe made their presence known.
Ash opened the fourth inning with a solo homerun to stretch the lead. Only three batters later, Lindsay McCabe rocketed one over the left-field fence, bringing in herself and Bridget Wilgus. Ash’s very next at-bat saw another solo homer to bring the Indian’s score to seven. Buchler sealed the game with a double play to extinguish Nandua.
“I don’t want us to live and die by the homerun,” said Browne. “That’s my emphasis to the team tomorrow. We’re going to hit homeruns, but we don’t want to depend on them. We want to be able to manufacture hits, good base running and things of that nature.”
Ash, a new varsity player, returned this year to Lady Indians softball after some time away from the game.
“It was a nice welcome to the team,” said Browne, “to have her come out and hit the ball like that after not playing for a while. She hit her homeruns from the seven-spot. That’s a nice luxury to have, when you have girls at the bottom of the order that can deliver hits like that,” he added. And as for McCabe’s two-run homerun, “You can’t hit the ball harder than she did.”
Nandua generally has a strong team, but they lost six seniors last year.
“They’re young this season,” said Browne. “They’re a great ball club, but I would have liked to have put up some more runs this game. They played well.”
Captain Hayley Brennan was pleased with the win, and said she hopes it’s a foreshadowing of the team’s performance this year.
“There are definitely a lot jitters with the first game of the season,” she said, “but this is a good game to open up with. It can really give us confidence getting into the season.”
The Lady Indians were set to travel to St. Mark’s on Thursday, after Coastal Point press deadline. They will host Red Lion Christian Academy at noon this Saturday, March 29, and travel to Smyrna on April Fool’s Day, with a start time of 4:15 p.m. IR returns home on Thursday, April 3, hosting Cape Henlopen at 4:15 p.m.