Falcons fly past Washington

Washington High School seniors Molly Sparks, Haylee Wilson and Carly Burlingame were feted with fireworks after Wednesday's nonconference softball game against west Burlington.

Unfortunately, the Falcons provided fireworks during the game for a 5-1 victory.

West Burlington's Makenna Davis sent the second pitch of the game over the leftfield fence, then the Falcons plated four runs in the top of the seventh inning.

The Demons evened the score right away in the bottom of the first.

Kellie Dallmeyer was hit by a Falcons pitch, went to second on a ground out and scored on Alexa Mitchell's single. Mitchell was 3 for 3 in the game.

The game remained 1-1 until the seventh inning when some of the fireworks were self-inflicted.

'When we lose games, it's because we shoot ourselves in the foot,” Washington head coach Ben Obermann said. 'Obviously, we are not trying to make physical mistakes.”

West Burlington's Morgan Flowers was hit by a pitch to start the seventh inning and sacrificed to second. What followed was a fielding error, a three-base throwing error, a single and a double.

'There is something to be said for just putting the ball in play,” West Burlington head coach David Oleson said. 'We have been a good late-inning team. We have done it all year. We finished the game well, but you can't start a game any better than we did with Davis's home run on the second pitch of the game. She seen it and it smoked out of here. We took advantage of the breaks we got in the seventh inning.”

The Demons got a runner on in the second, third and fourth innings but the best chance to take the lead was when Mitchell was at third base in the sixth inning with one out and didn't score.

'We had an opportunity to score with a runner at third in the sixth inning and we didn't do it,” Obermannn said. 'That's when the middle of our order was up and, to me, that was the game.”

Besides Mitchell's three hits, the Demons had just two others, one from Wilson and one from Burlingame.

West Burlington's Lauren Summers struck out four and walked one.

'I have a really great eighth-grade pitcher,” Oleson said. 'She has decent movement.”

Sparks took the loss.

'Molly was awesome, like usual in the circle,” Obermann said. 'She deserved a better fate. She shook off that homer because nothing really fazes her. She did a good job. She kept the ball down and was spinning it well.”

Defensive errors have been a problem for the Demons this season and four in this game spelled the difference.

'We did have some people in different spots tonight because it was senior night,” Obermann said. 'That doesn't matter. We are capable of making the plays, we just did not do it. Mistakes are going to be magnified against good teams in a low-scoring game. When we made mistakes in the seventh, they took adantage of them. You just cannot afford mistakes when there are runners on base.”

West Burlington is 21-10.

Washington is 21-13 and plays at Mid-Prairie Friday.