Playing strong defense and receiving a stellar pitching performance from seventh-grader Hannah Kazemba, the Heron Lake-Okabena / Fulda varsity softball team competed well last Tuesday (May 14) in a Red Rock Conference high school fast-pitch softball game at Ellsworth.
The Coyotes tangled with the combination of Adrian and Ellsworth, known as the Adrian Area Dragons. After four scoreless innings, the host Dragons came out on top, claiming a narrow 3-1 victory.
“This was a great defensive game by both teams,” summed up Coyotes’ head girls’ softball coach Janae Kazemba. “The score was tied at 0-0 after four innings and ended up 3-1 in their favor, but our girls really played good defense behind Hannah, who pitched very well.”
Hannah Kazemba struck out seven Dragon hitters and also had a fine day at the plate herself as she rapped a pair of hits (a single and a double) as well as scoring her team’s lone run when she raced home on a RBI single by Cassidy Hennings, after smacking a double in the top of the sixth inning.
The Coyotes ripped a total of nine hits in the game, spread among six players. Junior second baseman Kailee Haberman (single, double) and sophomore left fielder Amber Ruthenbeck (two singles) also had two hits each, while junior catcher Cheyliska Schaffer, sophomore right fielder CeCe Ayala and Hennings, a senior center fielder, cracked a single each in the tightly-contested game.
