A 10th-inning RBI double by Topeka High’s Jessica Gragg ended a marathon game and sent Emporia High’s softball team home with a pair of losses on Tuesday in Topeka.
The Spartans lost the seesaw second game by a 9-8 final. Emporia took a 5-3 lead into the bottom of the sixth before surrendering three runs and the lead to the Trojans. The Spartans got two runs in their half of the seventh to retake the lead 7-6, but Topeka High got the game to extra innings and won it on Gragg’s hit.
“We stayed with ’em pretty much hit for hit and all this kind of stuff, and the ballgame really (came) down to speed,” EHS coach Ray Owens said. “...They were able to take advantage of when they got base hits, and they had speed.”
Hilary Heinrichs and Lexi Hileman each went 3-for-5 for EHS in the second game, and Hileman drilled two doubles. Lenae Wells, Megan Burton and Gabriella Tabares-Bohrer each had two hits. Tabares-Bohrer, a freshman, made her first career start on the mound in Game Two, replacing the Spartans’ normal second-game starter, Hannah Lynch, who’s battling back problems. Tabares-Bohrer went 5 2/3 innings, impressing Owens before Topeka High’s rally in the sixth.
“And God man, I’m telling you, I just didn’t get her out of there quick enough,” Owens said. “She got into that sixth inning, and they hit her for two quick runs before I got her out of there.”
Cassandra Huth, the starter in the Spartans’ 8-3 loss in Game One, relieved Tabares-Bohrer and took the Game Two loss as well. Emporia’s four-run sixth inning came off RBI singles by Tabares-Bohrer and Hileman and a two-run double by Melissa Heinitz. Heinrichs and Maryann Bennett also had hits during the rally.
In Game One, Hileman and Tabares-Bohrer both went 2-for-3, and Tabares-Bohrer and Heinrichs had triples.
Friday at Topeka
Game One
Emporia 000 200 1 — 3 5 2
Topeka High 005 210 0 — 8 10 0
WP — Styker. LP — Huth.
2B — THS: Sprew. EMP: 3B — EMP: Heinrichs, Tabares-Bohrer.
Game Two
Emporia 000 014 201 0 — 8 16 2
Topeka High 210 003 101 1 — 9 13 1
WP — Luna. LP — Huth.
2B — EHS: Hileman 2, Heinitz; THS: Gragg, Valdivia. 3B — THS: Luna.