Trojans win battle of ranked teams

FAIRFIELD - Sometimes the games don't live up to their billing.

The 2020 summer high school sports season got underway Monday with two ranked Class 4A Southeast Conference teams facing off.

A lively crowd filled the area while maintaining social distancing.

Fairfield let the air out of the ranked battle behind Allison Rebling and Hannah Simpson for a 10-0 victory in five innings of the opener and a 14-6 come-from-behind win in the nightcap.

'Rankings don't mean anything in any sport and especially preseason rankings don't mean anything,” Fairfield head coach Bob Bradfield said. 'It's nice someone thinks that we are good. It's nice for the conference.”

It is also nice when a team's starting pitcher goes the distance and allows just two base runners. Allison Rebling surrendered a walk and a hit in the opening Fairfield win while striking out seven.

'Allison has been a good pitcher for several years so we expect that out of her,” Bradfield said. 'We will take her performance any night out.

'We could not handle her in that first game,” Washington head coach Ben Obermann said. 'We did not help ourselves defensively. First game, we gave them 12 freebies, which is walks, errors, passed balls, wild pitches. If you have a good team like Fairfield and give them extra bases you're not going to be successful. That was the story of that. We did not have a good approach at the plate and gave them too many free bases.”

Rylee Fishback had the lone Washington hit.

Fairfield also earned bases with Shaylin Drish going 3-for-4 with two runs batted in. Simpson was 2-for-3 with five RBI which included a three-run home run.

'The home run felt pretty good,” she said. 'It was a middle inside low pitch. It was pretty good to hit that because I wasn't expecting it. Because it is our first game and we haven't really seen any live hitting, I wasn't expecting that to happen. There hasn't been a lot of live hitting or life pitching, so I was kind of shocked, But it felt really good.”

Simpson was 1-for-2 in the second game with two earned base on balls and one intentional walk. She scored three times, twice sliding home on a passed ball or wild pitch.

'In practice, we have been working on sliding and I tore some skin up and then sliding at home, I tore off the scab,” Simpson said. 'That first one I dove in and got it gashed. I scored twice on passed balls so I got a lot of practice sliding tonight but my teammates told me that my sliding was not the best. I guess it's something I still need to work on. I can't see myself sliding. It feels good but maybe I'd like to get a picture of it.”

It is easier for anyone to just trot around the bases and she got to do that with the home run and the intentional walk.

The Demons took hold of the second game with two runs in the first, one in the second and one in the third for a 4-0 lead but Fairfield got on the board with three in the third, two unearned and three more in the fifth for a 6-5 lead. Eight runs in the bottom of the sixth, half unearned, were the difference.

'We just stuck with it in that second game,” Bradfield said. 'It wasn't like there was any magic involved.”

He didn't give any stirring speeches that spurred the Trojans on.

'I just told them we need runners on base,” he said. 'That's our mantra every game. Especially when you're behind you need runners on base. They gave us some runs on wild pitches that let us get back in. It helped that we hit the ball pretty well the last three or four innings. Their pitcher walked a few and we got some hits at the right time.”

The Demons also had a lot of hits (11) in the second game but 10 walks and three errors were too much to overcome.

Kellie Dallmeyer went 3-for-5 and Kinsey Duwa was 2-for-4 for Washington.

Coty Engle pitched the first five innings and Rebling the last two.

'Engle gave us trouble last year,” Obermann said. 'She did not lose a conference game. We had much better approaches in the second game because we were spraying the ball from gap to gap. Anytime you have double digit hits and score six runs you're usually going to win the game. I thought we responded well from the poor offensive showing. We had some hits that were line outs that could've been extra bases. Destiny Gridley at second base is one of the taller second baseman we'll see and she went airborne to end that inning where we had the bases loaded.”