| Lady
Pirates take second at State
For the second year in a row the Prairie Lady Pirates softball team reached the state championship only to lose to Culdesac. This time the final score was 6-7. The tournament was held on Friday and Saturday, May 19-20 at Caldwell. On Friday the Pirates beat Notus 13-4 and Greenleaf 16-3 in round-robin play to clinch a berth in the championship game. Culdesac beat the same two teams by scores of 12-0 and 15-5 to also clinch a championship game berth. With nothing to be gained other than the home team advantage from their round-robin game scheduled for Saturday morning, the two teams decided to dispense with that game and go right to the championship game with Culdesac winning. They added 4 more in the bottom of the second and 4 in the sixth to cruise to the easy win. Meghan VanderPas allowed just 4 hits and 4 walks with 10 strikeouts. All 4 Notus runs were unearned. Prairie had 7 hits with VanderPas collecting a double and single, Alli Holthaus 2 singles, Kara Guyer a double and Lindsey Crea a single. Notus 1 1 0 0 2 0 0— 4 4 3 Prairie 5 4 0 0 0 4 x—13 7 3 They added 6 more runs in the fifth to end the game early on the 10-run rule. VanderPas tossed a 1-hitter. Greenleaf scored all three of their runs in the bottom of the fifth. Alli Holthaus had 4 RBI and 3 singles as Prairie pounded out 11 hits in the game. VanderPas had a double and single, Crea had 2 singles and Brooke Holthaus, Ashley Schaeffer, Natalie Arnzen and Guyer each had a single. Prairie 2 8 0 0 6—16 11 2 Greenleaf 0 0 0 0 3— 3 1 4 Culdesac pounded out 7 of their 10 hits in the game in a 7-run second inning. Prairie came back with 2 runs of their own in the bottom of the inning and cut the lead to 1 with 4 runs in the fourth off starter Nikki Lane. Culdesac changed pitchers in the fifth and Amanda Wilson-Mitchell shut Prairie out the rest of the way. Prairie had six hits in the game led by Lindsey Crea who had a single and double. VanderPas had a double and Schaeffer, Arnzen and Holthaus each added single. Prairie ends their season with a 21-4 record with their only 2 losses in their final 23 games coming to Culdesac. Culdesac 0 7 0 0 0 0 0—7 10 3 Prairie 0 2 0 4 0 0 0—6 6 2 |
 |
