The towel that Madeline Roberts bled into after taking a ball to the face Wednesday. (Amy King photo)
Roberts (left) in a happier moment earlier this season, with teammate McKayla Bailey. (John Fisken photos)
Madeline Strasburg, AKA Maddie Big Time, was a lot wetter Wednesday, but did get a brownie after thumping a two-run double.
All in all, it was a fairly miserable day. With a few good moments.
It was cold, wet and windy on the prairie Wednesday, and by the time Coupeville High School had finished taking a 13-2 thumping from visiting Cedarcrest, not too many softball fans were sorry to see the game ended after five drizzly innings.
After watching a brief strong start fade quickly into a non-stop series of errors and mental miscues, CHS coach David King was certain of one thing — his team will spend a lot of Thursday’s practice running.
“They need to decide what they want to do, how they want to play,” he said. “Hitting, running, throwing — it all needs to be worked on.
“I was embarrassed with our effort and play. We had the bleachers full of loyal fans and we are still struggling with things we did at the beginning of the season,” King added. “As a team we are better than this and our fans deserve a better game from us.”
The Wolves, who fell to 3-6 overall, 2-6 in Cascade Conference play, had a few bright moments, but, if one image summed up the game for Coupeville, it was shortstop Madeline Roberts sitting on the bench, blood staining a towel held to her face.
Roberts, who made a nifty unassisted double play in the first inning, when she speared a liner in the hole and then tagged out a straying runner, took a shot to the face in the fifth.
A ball coming in from the outfield took a hard hop off the infield dirt and exploded upwards, burrowing under her mitt and connecting with her upper lip and nose.
The only one of the four Wolf infielders not to be wearing a mask at that moment, she nevertheless escaped with no loose teeth and did return for an at-bat once she had finished turning her towel red.
At which point, she was promptly hit by a pitch…
Early on, riding a surge of emotion from Roberts’ double play, Coupeville looked ready to tangle with Cedarcrest much as they did the first time the two squads faced off. That day, a last-inning Red Wolves rally lifted them to a 4-3 win.
With runners at the corners in the bottom of the first, Madeline Strasburg cranked a ball to right field that took a last-second curve in the wind and shot past the Cedarcrest outfielder.
McKayla Bailey strolled home from third, while Hailey Hammer and her still-gimpy leg (basketball injury) came rumbling around from first to stake the Wolves to a 2-1 lead.
It looked like they might get more, as the next batter, Haley Sherman, launched a long shot to left center, only to watch in frustration as a Cedarcrest outfielder made a sprinting catch on the ball.
Unfortunately, that was where most of the offensive attack vanished for Coupeville. Back-to-back one-two-three innings hurt, then the Wolves got shafted by the umps in the fourth.
Hammer led off with a double, Strasburg missed another double down the line by mere inches and Sherman cranked another blast that was run down.
The second base ump decided that Hammer, who, we might remind you, is limping along on a leg-and-a-half, left the base too early on Sherman’s ball and called her out, ending the inning.
He then tried to buddy up with King and got shot down, hard, to the delight of the CHS fans.
“You want to talk about it?”
“You want to change your call?”
“No…”
“Then we have nothing to talk about, do we?”
King didn’t actually utter the words, “I said good day, sir!” as he sat down and turned his back, leaving the ump to awkwardly wander away, but you could feel it in the air, and it was a highlight.
Cedarcrest tagged a few strong hits, but nothing that hurt as much as a string of throwing errors and players covering the wrong base or, worse, simply not being even close to the base they WERE supposed to cover, leaving throws to fly into open space.
A game that was only 3-2 after three innings ballooned out of control once the errors piled up.
The few bright spots after that were a strongly-hit fifth-inning single from Monica Vidoni, (“She stayed back on the ball. Once she understands the strength she has and when she can consistently be patient at bat, she can become a very good hitter”), a nice track-down by Bailey on a popup that moved quite a bit in the breeze, and Strasburg’s vocal leadership.
Along with her two-run double, Maddie Big Time kept up the patter from the bench, urging on her teammates all game.
With CHS co-coach Amy King having just returned to the bench after a hospital stay, the Wolves had players taking her spot in the first base coaches box.
Jae LeVine worked the first four innings, then in the fifth, when David King called for someone to take the job, Strasburg came flying out of the dugout, throwing teammates left and right, slapping a helmet on her head and bellowing “I got this, man!” as she all but cartwheeled across the field.
After the game, she saw the plate of brownies I was holding (a present from CHS track mom Nanette Streubel) and came charging just as hard.
“Brownies? You got brownies?!?! I think I should have one! I definitely think I should have one!! Come on, I had a big hit! You know you want to give me one!!!”
She got her brownie.
Was there ever a doubt she would?
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