Published: May 21, 2008 12:42 am         

Cain’s triple helps Cass advance

Sites shuts down Southwood in Lady Kings’ 2-1 win.

WABASH — Lewis Cass faced off with Southwood in the first semifinal of the Wabash softball sectional on Tuesday evening and what a game it turned out to be.

The Lady Kings continued their march in their pursuit of another sectional title with a 2-1 win over Knights.

Pitchers for both teams were on top of their games as Cass’ Amie Sites picked up the win allowing just one run on two hits in a complete-game effort. She fanned four and walked three.

“Amie did a super job pitching tonight,” Cass coach Scott Rouch said. “She was focused and I think she did a great job keeping the ball down. She caused them to hit the ground balls and the pop-ups, and we made the defense make the plays.”

Sites credited her catcher Mallory Cummings with calling a nice game.

“She called the outside and the drop more than what she did last night,” Sites said. “That’s one of my best pitches so I could throw that easily. So she called it and that’s a hard pitch for a batter to hit so she called it a lot tonight.”

Southwood’s Olivia Winget also fanned four and issued only one walk. However, she did allow four Cass hits during the course of the game. Southwood fans are not likely to forget anytime soon the last hit surrendered.

With the score knotted at 1-1 in the top of the seventh inning, Cass freshman Ellie Cain came to the plate and smacked Winget’s first offering down the right-field line for a leadoff triple with no outs.

“I was just hoping to hit the ball and get on base so we could win the game,” said Cain.

Aly Small then came to the plate with hopes of scoring Cain from third but her fly ball to shallow center field was caught by a charging Andria Dillon, and Cain was not able to advance. Another Cass freshman came to the plate in Peyton Klinkhamer who grounded out to the third baseman for the second out, on the throw to first Cain broke for home and safely slid in ahead of the tag giving the Lady Kings what turned out to be the game-winning run.

“I give Southwood alot of credit,” Rouch said. “Their pitcher did a nice job keeping us off balance with the change-up and staying on the outside edge of the plate.”

Southwood drew first blood in the game during the second inning when the Lady Knights’ Taylor Striker hit a lazy pop-up just behind a retreating Klinkhamer at short. Just as she made it to the spot where the ball was coming down, it hit her glove and dropped to the ground allowing Striker to reach second. Following the first of Sites’ strikeouts Winget aided her cause with a two-out base hit scoring Striker from second for Southwood’s only run of the game.

The Kings’ other run came in the third inning when leadoff hitter Emily Watkins drew a walk. Krista Weber then added a single to put runners on first and second. The Lady Knights were now looking at the top of the Kings’ batting order coming to the plate with no outs. Jennifer Berlet then delivered an infield hit advancing the other runners and loading the bases. Tayler Dehaven stepped to the plate and reached safely on an error by the center fielder thus allowing Watkins to score from third.

With the win, Lewis Cass will play the Wabash-North Miami winner at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday evening for the Wabash Sectional championship.