FIELD TWP- The North Woods softball team split a pair of games bracketing the weekend this past week with a Friday home loss to South Ridge balanced by a Monday road win over Mt. Iron-Buhl.
The 6-4 win against MIB was the Grizzlies’ second of the season over the Rangers, a complete turnaround from last year’s results.
MIB took the early lead with a run in the bottom of the second, but the Grizzlies’ Rory Bundy scored the equalizer in the top of the third. The Rangers responded with two runs in their half of the inning, carrying a 3-1 lead into the fourth.
The Grizzlies held tough defensively, keeping MIB off the board in the fourth, and notched three-and-outs against the Rangers in the fifth and sixth.
That gave the Grizzlies the chance they needed to take the lead, getting two runs from Emarie Gibson and Ella Kruse in the fifth before cleanup hitter River Cheney stepped to the plate in the sixth and crushed a two-run homer, bringing Zoey Burckhardt home ahead of her. Bundy scored an insurance run in the seventh before MIB’s final at bat, and the Rangers could muster only a solitary run to fall to the Grizzlies 6-4.
The home game against South Ridge the Friday prior was a prime example of what happens when one team gets hitting fever, and unfortunately that team wasn’t North Woods. When starter Addison Burckhardt was throwing strikes and even when she wasn’t, the Panthers batters were putting the ball in play with hits and forcing Grizzlies errors. The Panthers were well-disciplined at the plate as they scored two runs in the first, six in the third, two in the fourth and one in the fifth. In contrast, the Grizzlies were shackled at the plate, pushing across only one run in the second by River Cheney after she stretched an outfield hit into a triple with a belly slide into third. South Ridge won the run-rule shortened game in five, 11-1.