Vikings have trouble catching up
Published 9:30 am Friday, June 13, 2008
The Northwood-Kensett softball suffered a devastating blow when senior center fielder Danielle Love injured her knee running to first base Thursday night at home against Garner-Hayfield in a 13-0, five inning loss.
Love appeared to hit her foot against the first base bag and tripped, immediately doubling over in pain. Vikings head coach Aaron Foster said he believed she suffered a dislocated knee.
“We hope the best for her, but we all saw how serious it is,” Foster said. “Unfortunately she’s a senior and it doesn’t look good.”
Northwood-Kensett has dealt with injuries all season, but losing Love has a big impact as she was the team’s leadoff hitter and a leader.
After a long delay the teams resumed played and the Cardinals cranked out five runs in the fifth inning to win 13-0.
The Vikings bats had a difficult time at the plate as they only had two hits on the evening, but it has been a difficult adjustment lately.
“The pitcher from Riceville was way faster and the night before the pitcher was way slower,” Foster said. “That’s the toughest thing. You can’t hit off a pitching machine when you’re having different speeds every night.”
Errors continued to plague Northwood-Kensett as Garner-Hayfield took advantage of extra outs.
“Once again, we’re making JV mistakes on the varsity squad,” Foster said. “That’s killing us.”
The change of speeds was too much for the Northwood-Kensett softball team to handle Wednesday night against Riceville as they lost 8-1.
After facing a pitcher that threw at a slower speed than the Vikings were used to they couldn’t adjust in time to catch up to the speed of the Riceville starter.
“We didn’t get adjusted until the sixth inning,” Northwood-Kensett head coach Aaron Foster said. “Just too late.”
Ten of the first 15 Viking batters struck out in the game and could only score one run in the game when Rachel Taylor scored a single by Danielle Love in the sixth.
Garner-Hayfield 13, Northwood-Kensett 0, 5 innings
G-H 053 05x x – 13 9 1
N-K 000 00x x – 0 2 5
LP – Marissa Nitcher 7 IP, 13 R, 9 H, 3 K, 2 BB
Riceville 8, Northwood-Kensett 1
Northwood-Kensett – 000 001 0 – 1 5 1
Riceville – 103 400 0 – 8 10 1
LP – Lauren Severson 4 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 4 BB, 6 K
Kate Hartman 3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 K