Whitworth Pirates get off to slow start in NCAA softball tournament
Linfield used a five-run fifth inning Friday to break open a close game and beat host Whitworth 6-0 in the first game of the Spokane NCAA Division III softball regional tournament.
The Pirates (29-14) play Saturday at 1:30 p.m. against top seed Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (34-9-1), which also lost Friday, 5-2, to George Fox (31-14).
The early game started as a pitchers’ duel between Whitworth’s junior pitcher Madi Perez and Tigers freshman Shelby Saylors.
“I thought the first four innings were spectacular,” Whitworth coach Cristal Brown said. “Then we had one inning that burned us.”
The Wildcats (30-13) finally got going in the top of the fifth. Two runs came home on Emily Allen’s single to left. Linfield then loaded the bases and scored on three consecutive RBI singles, including the final one by Kenzie Schmoll, who had led off the inning with one of her four hits. The inning included six hits, an error and two stolen bases.
Linfield added a home run in the sixth by Danielle Duman.
The Pirates got hits from Alyssa Hall, Kelsey Downey and two from Chelsey Hayes..
Perez (9-9) pitched 4 1/3 innings and gave up four earned runs and seven hits. Makayla Lefever relieved Perez and gave up seven hits and one earned run.
“I don’t feel like they were hitting anything different,” Perez said of the fifth inning. “We just kind of fell apart mentally.”
The four-team regional continues into Sunday until three teams lose twice.
With the loss, Whitworth fell to 2-4 against the Wildcats this season even though Whitworth won the regular-season Northwest Conference championship.
“We’ve played seven games in Spokane. “It’s like our second home,” Linfield coach Jackson Vaughan said. “Whitworth is a good team. But we felt we matched up pretty well.”
He praised Saylors, who walked two and struck out none, for keeping the Pirates off-balance, inducing several pop-ups.
“We had the one big inning,” Vaughan said. “That obviously was the difference in the game.”