Venom sluggers (l to r) Emma Mathusek, Scout Smith and Maya Toomey-Stout combined for six hits in a 17-7 win Tuesday night. (John Fisken photo)
The weather was cold, but the bats were hot.
A day after Whidbey Island was scorched by the sun, we were back to chilly, swirling breeze on the prairie Tuesday, but that wasn’t enough to slow down the Venom.
Central Whidbey Little League’s Juniors softball squad whacked 12 hits and scored in every inning en route to thrashing visiting North Whidbey 17-7 in a game called after four innings.
The win, the team’s third straight, lifted them to 4-2 on the season.
The Venom came out aggressively, with starting pitcher Scout Smith firing BB’s, whiffing two and holding North Whidbey hit-less over the first two innings.
Her teammates quickly gave her a sizable lead, plating four in the first and another in the second.
The gazelle-like Maya Toomey-Stout, making her season debut at catcher, drew a lead-off walk, stole second on a play where she was two inches from the bag before the ball even arrived at the plate, then scampered home on an RBI single from Emma Mathusek.
Central Whidbey tacked on runs off of a passed ball and an error before Willow Vick capped the first-inning rally.
She golfed an RBI single that went two miles high over short, then plummeted downward, finding a tiny crack between two defenders as it arrived back on Earth.
A bases-loaded walk to Hannah Davidson forced in another run in the second to make it 5-0, before North Whidbey found its one rally.
Taking advantage of a switch in pitchers, the Oak Harbor squad used five walks (including a batter plunked on the posterior) and a couple of passed balls to tie things up at 5-5.
The Venom flipped to their third pitcher of the game, moving Chelsea Prescott in from shortstop with two outs, and the heat-chuckin’ 7th grader immediately shut things back down.
She ended the inning with a strikeout on a nasty fastball, then held North Whidbey in check the rest of the way.
As quickly as the game got close, it went right back to being a blow-out, as Central Whidbey couldn’t stop hitting.
Sending 12 hitters to the plate in the bottom of the third, the Venom rained down a game-busting seven runs off of five hits.
Melia Welling lofted a gorgeous shot to right field that sliced just over the first baseman’s head to kick things off, then returned later in the inning with a two-run single to cap the scoring.
In between, Toomey-Stout, Smith and Mollie Bailey all collected base knocks, with Smith’s exploding off of the bag at third and Bailey’s being a laser shot to left center.
North Whidbey’s pitching came a bit unglued in the fourth, with five walks and five wild pitches allowing the Venom to scratch out enough runs to invoke the ten-run rule.
Fittingly, though, on a day when Central Whidbey was generating hits from the top of the order to the bottom, the final run came home off of a single up the middle from Toomey-Stout.
Proving her blazing speed is not a fluke, she was already at first before the ball left the bat.
Or at least it seemed that way.
Toomey-Stout, AKA “Gazelle,” led the way with three hits, while Smith, Prescott and Welling had two apiece.
Mathusek, Vick and Bailey each chipped in with a hit, while Davidson, Cynthia Rachal and Marenna Rebischke-Smith combined to draw six walks.
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