Central takes league softball tourney early exit
Central College
DECORAH—Whatever momentum was generated by an inspired effort in a 14-inning loss Thursday evening evaporated overnight as the Central College softball team made a quick exit from the Iowa Conference tournament Friday, stumbling to an 8-4 defeat against Simpson College.
No. 5-ranked Central (35-7) returns home to await word of its NCAA Division III tournament fate. The 60-team field will be announced Monday morning at 11 a.m. on www.ncaa.com. One of the eight regional tournaments will be staged in Pella next weekend and, even with the league tourney setbacks, it will be an upset of sorts if the Dutch are not tabbed as one of the teams to compete there. Central has made 22 NCAA tourney appearances in the past 25 years, including the last two.
Simpson (23-17) jumped on top early with two Tieryn Potratz home runs in the first two innings Friday, putting the Dutch in a 5-0 hole. Simpson pitcher Bryn Johnson then gave anxious Central hitters a steady diet of off-speed pitches and kept them off-balance most of the day.
Down 7-0 in the fifth inning, Central finally broke through for four runs, two of which were unearned. Designated player Rachael Everingham (junior, Georgetown, Ill., Georgetown-Ridge Farm HS) had an RBI single and first baseman Katie Tenboer (senior, Morrison, Ill.) deliverd a run-scoring double. That upped Tenboer’s school season-record RBI total to 43. But the Dutch managed just five hits on the day while yielding 11 and committing two errors.
Kiley Lythberg (senior, Mount Prospect, Ill., Prospect HS) had an uncharacteristic rocky outing, giving up seven runs on eight hits, although just two runs were earned. She walked two with no strikeouts in five innings. Rhianna Fleetwood (sophomore, Sycamore, Ill.) surrendered a run on three hits with a walk and no strikeouts in tossing the final two innings.
“It’s disappointing and a little surprising,” coach George Wares said of the loss. “We won’t make any excuses. A lot of people will give us one because of the 14-inning game last night, but we still had to come out and play and we didn’t. Simpson played better.”
Wares said an NCAA berth would provide a welcome chance for a rebound, but work remains.
“Obviously we need to get some rest on Saturday and Sunday,” he said. “Then we’ve got to work around final exams next week and try to get two or three quality practices. We’ve really got to look at it as a big opportunity to make the season special and not end with this kind of feeling we have today.
“It’s a big challenge for us as coaches to get every player to look at the total package in terms of how well we’ve played. And individually they need to look at the number of times they’ve each played really well. It’s a lot like we said after we lost our first two games of the season. We aren’t as bad as we looked then and we aren’t as good as we looked the next day. But we’re a solid softball team.”
