Pirates shut out Valley, 9-0

0

WHEELERSBURG — Faith Howard pitched an almost perfect game Tuesday evening for the Wheelersburg Lady Pirates as she gave up only one hit, to the nine spot hitter, and another runner reached base on an error. She recorded six strike outs during her dominant performance.

“She pitched very well tonight,” said Pirate’s Head Coach Teresa Ruby. “She’s really come on since the first of the year and she’s definitively getting stronger as the season has progressed. It also helped her out that we played some strong defense behind her.”

The Pirates gave up the one error on the day, but made up for it with two fantastic plays in the field. Michal Cunningham made a diving stop at shortstop to save an early hit while catcher Kasey Bergan picked off one of the two base-runners for the Indians at first.

Offensively, the Pirates had no trouble bringing in runs. Five Pirates batted in runs: Cunningham, Bergan, Lexi Blair, Laiken Salyers, and Kalle Coleman who went 3-4 with a stolen base and a home run.

“It’s a nice luxury to have that kind of power at the top of the lineup,” said Ruby. “Our bats have been slightly stagnate the last few days so it was really nice to see them come along about the middle of the game.”

Wheelersburg is now 11-2 on the season and 8-0 in SOC. They host Oak Hill on Thursday.

For Valley, Head Coach Tim Brown knows there is no shame in losing to the defending SOC II champions, the Wheelersburg Pirates.

“They are pretty loaded,” said Brown. “They have two girls going to a division one college and another going to Shawnee State. They have a lot of experience and have terrific fundamentals. They have a lot of dedication and you can really tell by seeing them play.

“For us, we are young. We had some errors out of our younger girls that really let them get some momentum going. All in all we are one of the few teams who make it to seven innings against them so I’m proud of the girls for sticking in there.”

The Valley Lady Indians are now 9-6 on the year with three losses coming in the SOC II.

“Wheelersburg is the team to beat,” said Brown. “Minford beat us last night and we really shot ourselves in the foot with mistakes that game. We have to be able to catch fly balls going forward. We have a tendency of beating ourselves. We got beat tonight, I’ll say that. But if we can start cleaning up our mistakes in the field I’ll be happy. We are a young team, we have two seniors and one junior.

“The only thing I ask them to do is hang in there and compete.”

Valley hosts the South Webster Jeeps Thursday.

Box Score

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

R

H

E

Valley

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

3

Wheelersburg

1

0

4

2

0

2

X

9

11

1

Individual Statistics

W- Howard 7 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 6 K

L- Altman 6 IP, 11 H, 9 R, 7 ER, 2 K

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Derrick Parker

PDT Sports Contributor

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