Demons demolish Knoxville

Washington was able to play its first softball game in 10 days Wednesday and won by the 10-run rule, 13-3, over the visitors from Knoxville.

Washington scored two runs in the first inning, two more in the second, then gave up three runs in the third. The Demons responded with five in the bottom of the third, two in the fourth, then two in the sixth ended it.

'Initially, it was just fun to see the girls get the opportunity to compete again,” WHS coach Ben Obermann said. 'They've done such a great job keeping their focus and getting better at practice in the midst of all the rain outs, that it was just a great release for them to get the chance to play.”

Alexa Mitchell led the way at the plate with two singles, a double and five runs batted in.

'I loved our approaches at the plate,” Obermann said. 'Hitting is contagious, and we preach about having the mindset of winning every inning. We won five of the six innings, and the girls were locked in at the plate. We were seeing the ball well and hitting gap-to-gap.”

Kellie Dallmeyer and Kaitlyn Mitchell each had a double, a single and two RBI. Halle Leyden had two RBI on 2 of 3 at bats.

Molly Sparks got the win with five strikeouts, no walks, six hits allowed and only a single earned run.

'Molly was outstanding in the circle,” Obermann said. 'She was consistently up on hitters 0-2 or 1-2, which opens up so many options with her strong repertoire of pitches. She was spinning it well tonight and had pinpoint control location-wise. I was very happy for her to get that first complete game out of the way this season, as she's battled through a lot in the past six months to get to this point where she's physically able to be herself. She was quick and efficient, kept her pitch count low, which really helps us as we hit a busy stretch of our schedule here for the next week and a half.”

The Demons host Southeast Conference foe Fairfield in a doubleheader today, then have two games Friday and two more Saturday at the Hawkeye Softball Complex, then a doubleheader at SEC foe Keokuk Monday.

'Hopefully our approaches carry over from (Wednesday) into this weekend,” Obermann said. 'We had some baserunning miscues that we will need to clean up moving forward, but we will learn from those mistakes, and some of it has to do with not playing a game in 10 days, but after the first couple innings, I really thought we did a nice job keeping our mental and physical miscues to a minimum. We got better as the night went.”