MONROE — The Jackson softball team was one victory away from making Wednesday’s game against Monroe a showdown of two undefeated teams with first place in the Wesco 4A on the line.
Instead, the Timberwolves suffered their first loss of the season on Tuesday, 5-3 at the hands of Snohomish, meaning they needed Wednesday’s game to avoid falling behind the Bearcats in the league standings.
Jackson head coach Kyle Peacocke wasn’t quite sure how his team would respond, but after dominant 8-0 win, he was pleased with the result.
“They pretty much showed with their performance today that they were ready to go despite what happened yesterday,” Peacocke said. “It was a really good win for us to keep us all tied basically for first place.”
The Timberwolves, Bearcats and Panthers are all tied for first place with 6-1 league records.
Senior pitcher Sophie Frost set the tone for Jackson. She gave up just four hits, two of which came in the seventh inning when the game was all but over.
“Sophie is a workhorse,” Peacocke said. “She’s our senior leader. She provides our energy. To her credit, she bounced back from yesterday.”
With Frost in control, the Bearcats struggled to get anything going at the plate — and they didn’t help themselves in the field. Monroe committed six errors in the game and the Timberwolves took advantage. Jackson scored five runs in the top of the third inning when the Bearcats committed three of those six errors.
“Against a team like this, and a team like us if were playing like we should, you can’t sometimes even make one error,” Monroe head coach Mike Birch said. “We’re way too good to do that. We shouldn’t be making six errors in a season. That made a big difference tonight.”
Junior Taylor Adams sparked the offense with an RBI triple to straight-away center field to start the scoring in the third inning. Adams scored moments later, sliding under a tag attempt from catcher Morgan Allen at home plate to give the Timberwolves a 2-0 lead.
Jackson added to that later in the inning when senior Shayla Hendrickson hit a ball to right field that landed just inside the foul line. The ball got past the right fielder allowing the two lead runners to score, but much to Hendrickson’s surprise, she got waved around third base by Peacocke and made it home safely for a three-run inside-the-park home run.
“I think Peacocke was joking when he told me to go,” Hendrickson said. “On my way home, it felt like forever and I was just running hoping I wasn’t going to get out. That was a pretty exciting win right there.”
The Timberwolves added one run each in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings to go up 8-0.
Morgan Allen finished with two of Monroe’s four hits.
The Bearcats will have a chance to bounce back on Friday when they get their chance at the Panthers, but Wednesday’s loss will go down as a missed opportunity to go up two games on the Timberwolves and take over first place alone.
“It’s definitely a missed opportunity, but I really felt at the beginning of the season that no one was going to go undefeated,” Birch said. “It was going to be a battle. We’re off to a good start and we’ve got another chance at them. That’ll be fun.”
At Monroe H.S.
WP: Sophie Frost (7 IP, 4 H, 7 K; RBI). LP: McKenzie Schulz. Individual highlights: Jackson—Taylor Adams (2-5, 3B, RBI), Shayla Hendrickson (HR, 3 RBI), Kristina Day (3-5, RBI), Kristen Scott (2-4, 3B); Monroe—Morgan Allen (2-3). Jackson—6-1 league, 12-1 overall. Monroe 6-1, 12-1.
Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.
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