Central set for Sunday after soggy NCAA softball defeat
Central College
PELLA—Another top-10 clash, another extra-inning battle, another painful result for the Central College softball team.
Yet the No. 5 Dutch came away from Saturday’s 2-1, nine-inning NCAA Division III tournament setback against No. 7 Coe not just disappointed, but determined, coach George Wares said. The Kohawks had escaped Central 8-7 in 14 innings at the Iowa Conference tournament at Decorah May 5 Coe but fell to the Dutch in a pair of one-run games at Pella April 19.
Play in the double-elimination Pella Regional was suspended because of rain late Saturday afternoon with No. 16 Wis.-Whitewater and Washington-St. Louis (Mo.) knotted 0-0 in the fifth inning. The game will be resumed at 10 a.m. Sunday, with Central (36-8) taking on Anderson (Ind.) at approximately 11 a.m. Coe and No. 1 Linfield (Ore.) clash in a winner’s bracket game at 1 p.m., with the two morning winners then meeting at 3 p.m. at the A.N. Kuyper Athletics Complex field. The tourney concludes Monday.
“It’s probably good that we get a little more time to refocus,” said Wares, who needs just one victory to become the winningest coach in NCAA Division III history. “But in talking to the players, while they’re definitely down, if anything, their confidence has gone up a notch. And Kiley’s (Lythberg) (senior, Mount Prospect, Ill., Prospect HS) confidence has definitely gone up a notch.”
Lythberg has endured some recent struggles, including a rocky start to Thursday’s 12-7 NCAA tournament win over Benedictine (Ill.). But on a mud-lathered Saturday of wind, cold and steady drizzle, she matched Coe ace Ashlee Simon (27-2) for most of the day.
After yielding a first-inning run, Lythberg (18-6) retired 11 of the next 12 Coe batters. She held Coe (38-9) scoreless until the bottom of the ninth when a hit and an error gave the Kohawks a runner at third base with no outs. After intentionally walking the next two batters, Lythberg notched back-to-back strikeouts as she tried to squirm out of the inning, but then a mishandled grounder allowed the gamewinner to score.
“To look at the errors at the end and pinpoint them as the reason we lost would be ridiculous,” Wares said. “That’s the nature of the game. We’ve won our share of games like this and we’ve lost our share. Obviously we had a lot of opportunities before that but we just couldn’t get the big hit.”
Lythberg allowed five hits in 8.2 innings, striking out seven and walking three, two of which were intentional. Central had seven hits off Simon, who fanned seven with two walks, including an intentional pass.
“Number of hits aside, I thought we had a lot of hard-hit balls,” Wares said. “It’s ironic because we thought the wind blowing in would be to our advantage. As it turned out, it probably hurt us.”
In the top of the second, Central responded to Coe’s first-inning run with its only tally. Lythberg rocketed a double to right-center, the game’s only extra-base hit, and later scampered home from third on a two-out bloop single by catcher Caitlyn Meyer (sophomore, Newton).
But the Dutch failed to capitalize on a bases-loaded, no-outs chance in the fourth inning and left the bases jammed in the fifth as well.
“Give credit to Simon, she’s tough,” Wares said of the Coe hurler. “She takes away some of our options.”
The game was a dramatic contrast to Thursday’s error-filled slugfest with Benedictine.
“I actually felt better about today in many ways because this was softball,” said Wares, not a fan of less intense, high-scoring contests.
Central needs two victories Sunday to reach yet another loser’s bracket game Monday, tentatively set for 9 a.m. The survivor of that contest must then sweep a pair of additional Monday games against whichever team comes out of the winner’s bracket. The regional champ gains a berth in the eight-team national finals in Salem, Va. May 20-24.
“I’m pretty honest with our team and to tell them this was going to be easy would be ridiculous,” Wares said. “But I think we’re far from out of it. Right now we’re just hoping to get a chance to play on our home field on Monday.”
