Away at Parkway West 9/19

Two years ago we visited Parkway West, a conference opponent, and beat them 4-3. Last year they came to our place and beat us handily, in what may have represented the low point of our season. Erica has been promoted to the varsity where she will start for their conference game, so our probable line-up looks like this:

Bounce Back Win: Webster 14, Nerinx 3

This is a re-post from our previous entry which is lost in cyberspace somewhere, apparently. Although allegedly nothing ever disappears that has been put out on the internet, I think a truer statement is, “Only things you WISH would disappear stay out there forever.” In any case, we have pictures this time, courtesy again of Beth Kazlauskus.

It took a while to make adjustments, but the Webster bats broke out and sent Marker fielders running around chasing hard hit balls and romped to a 14-3 win over our neighbor, Nerinx Hall. A strong defensive game with good catches in the outfield by Kate Kazlauskus (returning from an injury sustained while playing up with the varsity) and Maggie Pool and solid infield play all around shut down the Marker offense and gave Sami Meyer good support as she won her third game of the season and Webster moved to a 4-6 overall mark after 10 games.

We'll have all our bullets tomorrow as Erica rejoins the JV when we take on the Falcons from Summit. Summit came back to beat Nerinx last week. They are often a tough match, but every year is different.

Holding On, Walking Off: Webster 10, Summit 9

After jumping out to a big 9-1 lead, we couldn't dent the plate until Summit fought back to tie the game, 9-9 (although Molly Kurtz's 4th-inning bases-loaded bullet that found the first baseman's glove would have cleared the sacks). Roschan Rao's great field-reversing catch on a fake bunt slash took the steam out of Summit and energized the Statesmen. Erica Waelterman took one for the team by accepting a hit-by-pitch, stole second and then, stealing third, kept motoring to the plate on Bekah Perman's hard ground ball that was boxed by the second baseman. Sami Meyer picked up her fourth victory with another solid outing, striking out five while walking only two. Megan McClure did a great job over at first, picking up a couple assists and making strong stretches on throws. 

The team is showing consistent improvement. That depth offers protection for promotions (temporary or otherwise) and injuries, but presents challenges to finding playing time in close games -- and we seem to play lots of close games!

Tomorrow is a practice day. We'll work with varsity, doing some position work, base-running, and some individualized drills. Most of the girls should be done by 4:30 or so, although some may be asked to stick around a little longer to work with the varsity a little bit.

Windsor 14, Webster 7

When Ursuline didn't have enough players for a JV, we replaced them with the Owls from Windsor, a program on the rise. This was a loss to a superior team. Don't know that they were 7 runs better, but this was a game that could have gotten away, but our girls showed grit and resilience.
We weren't quite ready to place at the pace Windsor quickly established and the Owls jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead in the first. I hope our girls learned from that. Nevertheless, the Statesmen didn't fold; instead they bowed their backs and kept the game close enough to force a full 7 innings against a pretty good JV pitcher. Nevertheless, we banged out 11 hits but left 14 runners on base as we couldn't come up with the big hit at the right time. Sami Meyer didn't let the early deficit keep her from working hard to keep us in the game.
Erica Waelterman, Megan McClure, and Emily Rapp had nice offensive days with 2 hits each and there were several good plays on the defensive side of the ball, as well. I'm hopeful that we learned a few things in terms of quicker decision making, both in the field and on the bases, because our inexperience showed on several occasions. But that's what JV softball is, a learning experience.
Join us a KAA (Kirkwood Athletic Association) Monday evening under the lights as we play side-by-side with the Varsity against Nerinx Hall.

Unexpected Loss, Parkway Central 6, Webster 4

Part of me wants to characterize this as a disappointing loss. All losses are somewhat disappointing on some level, of course, but when you expect to win....

But on further review, what's to be disappointed about? Certainly not the effort, certainly not the quality of play behind our pitchers. I think we're better hitters than we showed, but the Colts pitcher did a nice job and we couldn't center the ball to put pressure on their defense. We were also short three bullets due to illness and injury.

In short, it was a learning game, a chance to use in a game what we work on in practice. If our goal is to be a better team, from top to bottom, at season's end, then I hope we'll look back at this game as one of the stepping stones on the way to that goal.

Trying to Tame the Colts; Line-up for Parkway Central

We travel out to fashionable West County for a tilt against the Parkway Central Colts tomorrow. Barring unforeseen circumstances, our line-up will look like this:

Rebound Win: Webster 12, Lindbergh 2

Character counts. After yesterday’s tough loss it was great to see the girls rebound with positive energy and a strong game against Lindbergh. After the pitching heat we saw yesterday it took some time to adjust to the soft-tossing of the Flyer pitcher. Emily Rapp belted a big triple to open the scoring in the second and show it was possible to hit slow stuff. Aggressive baserunning scratched out a couple more. Batters finally adjusted and then Brittany Hartung iced the deal with a homerun to the fence in right center to provide the 10-run cushion.

Strong defense, notably Roschan Rao and Hannah Love (and Maggie Pool who took a single away with a strong throw to first from right field), backed a solid pitching performance by Sami Meyer.

We’ll have another short practice tomorrow (done by 4:30 at the latest), working on rundowns and speeding up our catch and release process (not fishing) before taking on Parkway Central at their house (Hwy 141 just north of I-64 and St. Luke’s Hospital). Sorry about forgetting to post today’s line-up. It’s pretty well set and it will be up tomorrow.