SNOHOMISH — With one swing of the bat, a nail-biting Wesco 4A softball game between Snohomish and Monroe lost most of its drama on Friday.
Junior Alyssa Simons hit a three-run home run to left-center field in the bottom of the fifth inning to lead the Panthers to a 5-0 win over the Bearcats.
“At that at-bat, I was pretty ready to just make contact with the ball because there were no outs and we had runners in scoring position,” Simons said. “It’s kind of tough to play with only a one-run lead. It just helped so much to have everyone relax and have more separation. I just saw the first pitch and it was there and so I jumped on it.”
The Panthers scored one run in the bottom of the first inning and held a 1-0 lead until just before Simons’ home run. The preceding batter, catcher Morgan Greenlee, reached base on an error and leadoff hitter Sami Reynolds scored on the play to give Snohomish a 2-0 lead before Simons cleared the bases.
Simons may not have known it at the time, but that home run earned her a day of rest from pitching. Snohomish head coach Lou Kennedy was contemplating replacing his starting pitcher Bailey Greenlee with Simons, but that changed with a five-run lead.
“It’s huge — especially with young pitcher — they need to have that faith that they’re going to stay in the game,” Kennedy said. “Yeah, she walked a couple and gave up a hit here and they start worrying about whether or not they’re coming out instead of worrying about what the pitch is and what the batter did last time. When you give them a little cushion, you can show a little bit more faith in them. That at-bat and that drive was huge.”
Greenlee didn’t have any problems finishing the game. She allowed two hits in the final two innings and closed the door on the Bearcats by getting Michaela Johnson to ground into the game’s only double play.
Greenlee allowed just six hits and struck out six. Many of her strikeouts came via the changeup, which is becoming a go-to pitch for the freshman.
“That changeup, when she can bring it in for a strike…she doesn’t telegraph it and it comes in and just dies,” Kennedy said. “If you are thinking swing for the fence, that ball isn’t there yet. It’s a real nice pitch.”
After Jackson’s loss to Lake Stevens on Thursday, the Panthers and Vikings are tied atop the Wesco 4A with just one league loss. Lake Stevens won the only meeting between the two teams this season 4-3 on April 7. The Timberwolves are one game behind the Panthers and Vikings with two league losses and the Bearcats now have three.
The Bearcats didn’t score any runs, but they did have several at-bats where they hit the ball hard and had just two fewer hits than the Panthers.
“They set the table and had a lot of base runners on, but we just got the one or two hits we needed to score a couple of runs,” Kennedy said. “I really thought it was going to be a 1-0 game the way it was going.”
Monroe head coach Mike Birch saw things similarly.
“We had a really good gameplan coming into today,” he said. “We just couldn’t string some hits together. We got runners on base, but we couldn’t get that one key hit that we need to at least put some runs on the board. We just weren’t getting it tonight.”
The Bearcats didn’t help themselves by committing three errors against the Panthers.
After an 8-0 start to the season, Monroe has lost three of its last four games — two to Monroe and one to Jackson. The difficult stretch of the schedule continues next Tuesday when the Bearcats face Lake Stevens.
“I think, right now, we’re just playing really tight,” Birch said. “The girls started strong and we’ve got a little bit of adversity now, so they’re really playing tight. I think that’s where some of the errors are coming from. You just can’t do that against these top four teams in Wesco. You just can’t give them extra outs.”
At Snohomish H.S.
Monroe 000 000 0 — 0 6 3
Snohomish 100 040 0 — 5 8 2
McKenzie Schulz and Morgan Allen. Bailey Greenlee and Morgan Greenlee. WP—B. Greenlee. LP—Schulz. 2B—Kacey Hvitved (M). HR—Alyssa Simons (S). Records—Monroe 4-3 league, 9-3 overall. Snohomish 7-1, 11-2.
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