The Emporia High softball team was locked in a battle with Topeka West in the second game of a doubleheader Thursday night and was starting to show some new life in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Down by one run, the Lady Spartans had runners on first and second thanks to a leadoff walk to Lauren Kimble and a base hit by Tiffany Chalupa off of West starter Breanna Seitz.
Then, the one person the Lady Spartans didn’t want to see in the pitching circle stepped out onto the field, as West’s Dori Dodson took over for Seitz at that point. Dodson had pitched a monster game in Game One against EHS, striking out 11 in a West victory.
“I remember one of our girls, when they went out there to change pitchers, said, ‘I hope they don’t put her (Dodson) in,’” shortstop McKenzie Cinelli said. “We knew she was a good pitcher.”
Dodson surrendered a bunt single to Lenae Wells on her first pitch to load the bases, but then struck out Hannah Lynch and Lexi Hileman and worked out of the jam when Kimble was caught in a rundown that ended the EHS threat.
Dodson closed out Game Two in much the same fashion as she had the first, striking out four more batters to run her total to 17, as Topeka West won, 4-1, to sweep EHS. West won the first game, 6-3.
“That was tough when we loaded them up and didn’t score,” EHS coach Ray Owens said. “We got down in the lower part of the order, and we’ve got some young kids down there where that’s just going to happen.”
A rash of errors helped Topeka West jump out to an early lead in Game Two, as Emporia High committed four errors in the first three innings that led directly to single runs in the second and third innings for the Lady Chargers, who took a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the third.
“It was frustrating,” Cinelli said. “We all had our errors, but we stayed in there, we came back from them and we never let ourselves get down.”
Emporia got a run back in its half of the third. Hileman led off with a single and then moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Abby Lake. Cinelli then smacked a double over the outstretched glove of West shortstop Amber Stanley to drive Hileman home to make it 2-1.
Cinelli went 2-for-4 in Game Two with two doubles.
But Dodson came into the game in the next inning and promptly squelched the Lady Spartan threat, and then Dodson rolled from there, as she only allowed two hits the rest of the way.
Thanks to another three EHS errors in the sixth, West tacked on two more runs against Emporia starter Hannah Lynch, who went all seven innings but surrendered just four hits and no earned runs.
“I thought I did pretty well. Most of my pitches were working,” Lynch said. “With all the errors, I just had to keep my head in the game and not let them affect me.”
In Game One, Dodson was dominant, as she struck out 11 EHS batters, retired the first 10 batters she faced and allowed just four hits.
West scored once in the first and took a 3-0 lead in the third when Tiffany Gabel knocked out a two-run homer. Emporia managed to score three runs in the fifth to pull to within one run at 4-3 when Tiffany Chalupa hit a double and Tia McAlister and Jennifer Lechien each hit singles.
However, EHS never threatened again, and West added two insurance runs in the seventh.
“Hitting is something we’ve got to work on,” Owens said. “We’re young, and the girls just get a little excited sometimes. We got a couple of good hits off our her ... but we need to get better there.”
Thursday at Emporia
Game One
Topeka West 6, Emporia 3
Topeka West 102 010 2 — 6 6 1
Emporia 000 030 0 — 3 4 2
TW: Dodson and Gabel. Emp: Heinrichs and Wells. W — Dodson. L — Heinrichs. 2B — TW: Swindell, Dodson, Gabel. Emp: Chalupa. HR — TW: Gabel.
Topeka West 011 002 0 — 4 4 0
Emporia 001 000 0 — 1 6 7
TW: Seitz, Dodson (4) and Gabel. Emp: Lynch and Wells. W — Seitz. L — Lynch. 2B — TW: Gabel. Emp: Cinelli (2).