Tigers claw past Panthers

NEW LONDON - The Mt. Pleasant and New London softball teams are so close, they might as well be in the same quarantine bubble. The Tigers and Panthers play their home games less than 15 minutes apart and that's enough to make it a rivalry game, but a little extra familiarity doesn't hurt.

On Wednesday night, New London defeated former head coach Troy Mears, former pitcher Sydni Coleman and the rest of the Panthers 8-5 in a back-and-forth battle.

Coleman, who was playing her first and last game against her former team after both Mt. Pleasant-New London games were rained out last year, did plenty to show off her skills at the plate, homering over the fence and inside the park. The senior nailed a solo shot over the center field wall in the third inning and scampered around for an inside-the-park homer in the seventh, but it wasn't quite enough to outlast a stingy Tiger squad.

After loading the bases in the first inning, Mt. Pleasant put up two runs on a Samantha Broeker sacrifice fly and a Grace Kelley RBI single. That gave the Panthers an early 2-0 advantage.

New London grabbed the lead in the second with a three-run inning. Sophie Malott knocked in one run in the bottom of the second, and Tiger starting pitcher Elly Manning brought two home with an RBI single to give New London a 3-2 lead.

Coleman's first home run of the game tied it at 3-3 in the third inning. Mt. Pleasant grabbed the lead back temporarily in the fifth when Savana Walls hit an RBI fielder's choice.

In the fifth, Alexa Wenger blooped an RBI single down the right field line to tie the game at 4-4. A scoreless Panther fifth set up for New London to go for the kill.

The Tigers capitalized on some shaky Mt. Pleasant defense in the sixth. The Panthers threw the ball away on bouncer by Manning that scored the lead runner, and a few batters later, the Tigers made them pay even more with a bases-clearing double by Kara Krieger, who ended up on third base on a throw attempt home. That's two huge hits in two nights for the New London cleanup batter, who also came through with a big RBI triple in New London's 5-4 win over Holy Trinity on Tuesday.

'That's the name of the game, making your own breaks,” New London head coach Mark Chiri said. 'It was a back and forth game, two good teams going at it. We got the breaks at the end when we needed them.”

With one on and nobody out in the seventh, Coleman hit her second dinger, albeit in a less-common fashion. Coleman hit a line drive into the right field corner, past a diving right fielder, and turned the jets on around the bases to find her way home.

'What's ironic is, she hurt us with her bat, and not her pitching,” Coach Chiri said. 'She's one of the better pitchers in Southeast Iowa.”

New London moved to 5-2 with the victory. Mt. Pleasant dropped to 2-5 with the loss.

'We swung the bats better tonight, a lot less pop-ups so that is a plus,” said Mt. Pleasant head coach Troy Mears. 'Our defense, we're still just a little young at spots. We fielded it good. We didn't boot it around, but it was just the simple things.”

Mears, who has made a handful of returns to New London in recent years, could relate to his starting pitcher coming back to play in New London.

'I thought she threw a pretty good game and was hitting spots pretty good, and swung the bat well, obviously,” Mears said. 'Even for me, it's kind of neat to come back and play where I coached a lot of the years.”

New London will have a night off before hosting another SEC squad, Washington, on Friday night. Mt. Pleasant hosts Fairfield in an SEC doubleheader tonight (Thursday).