By Drew Terhall

Dailyadvocate.com

GREENVILLE — Greenville, Bradford and Milton Union all played a double header against each other at Stebbins Field on April 13.

Greenville head coach Jerrod Newland said it was a fun day filled with softball at the field. With the sun shining for the first time in weeks, the stadium was filled as the teams took the field.

“Great day for Lady Wave softball. Fun day here at the stadium. We got the JV game coming, three games. It’s just fun stuff,” Newland said. “With just one game going on, a lot of people excited for the sun and the kids to play.”

For Bradford, it was a great opportunity to play some bigger schools. Bradford head coach Shon Schaffer said win or lose, playing against the bigger schools helps the team.

“We play bigger schools to get us ready to play the schools that are our size. If you look at our schedule, the schools that we play that are our size we’re right there with them,” Schaffer said.

Greenville 15 vs Bradford 3

The Lady Wave started the day with a run rule win over the Lady Railroaders in five innings.

Senior Skylar Bryson scored the games first run after coming in as a pitch runner. She scored on a dropped third strike to go up 1-0 in the first inning.

Sophomore Kendall Cromwell had a RBI single and senior Addie Burke had a RBI triple. Burke later scored on a wild pitch and Greenville was up 4-0 after the first inning.

In the second inning, junior Kylar Arnett and senior Mahayla Cook each had a RBI. Cromwell drove in another run in the second as Greenville went up 7-0.

Greenville was able to go on these scoring rallies all with two outs. Bradford was able to make plays and get the first two outs, but couldn’t quite shut the door on them.

Schaffer said playing Greenville helped his team play faster, something the young team is still learning to do. They were able to compete with Greenville for stretches of the game.

“We held our own there for three, four innings with Greenville. That’s a really good program with fast playing girls,” Schaffer said.

The Lady Wave kept tacking on runs as the game went on. Senior Ella McLear had four RBI in the game, including a base-clearing double in the third inning.

Bradford scored their three runs of the game in the third inning. Freshman Vivian Harlemen had a sacrifice bunt to drive in Bradford’s first run of the game. Freshman Chloe Hocker had a RBI single and junior Lex Clark had a RBI double.

On the mound, sophomore Casey Bolen had three strikeouts in four innings of work. For Greenville, junior Zoey Burns had two strikeouts in 2.1 innings and junior Morgan Thompson had two strikeouts in two innings of work.

Newland said it was a good game from his team, but they still have more room to improve.

“We’re going to get better. We’re a work in progress. It’s April, we’ll keep grinding the next six weeks and get much better,” Newland said.

Greenville 4 vs Milton Union 2

Next up was the Lady Wave taking on the Lady Bulldogs.

Greenville got on the board early with three runs scored in the first inning. Cromwell drove in two on a single and Burke drove in another on her second triple of the day.

Milton Union got one back in the second inning as they scored off an error by Greenville .

Cromwell drove in her third RBI of the game on a sacrifice groundout in the third inning.

From there, Greenville couldn’t scratch across more runs. Newland said they had a few chances to break open the game but couldn’t come through.

The Lady Bulldogs made it interesting in the last two innings. Down 4-1, they had bases loaded with no outs in the sixth inning.

With Burns on the mound, she struck out all three batters and left the bases full.

Then in seventh innings, Milton Union had bases loaded with two outs. They walked in one run to make it a 4-2 game.

Remaining calm, Burns got the strikeout to end the game and left the bases full once again. Newland said his team was able to make the winning plays when they needed them the most.

“They made the plays and it was a good ballgame. The last two innings they were beating the door down their third and fourth time through,” Newland said.

Burns pitched all seven innings and had 12 strikeouts.

Bradford 5 vs Milton Union 15

The day ended with the Lady Railroaders taking on the Lady Bulldogs.

Milton Union carried the momentum from the end of their last game into this one. They scored four runs in the first inning, three in the second inning and put up seven runs in the third inning.

The Lady Railroaders started off slow coming off a break. They committed a few errors early that gave Milton Union some free runs.

The bats started to come to life after the first two innings. Harlemen had an inside the park home run in the third inning.

Bradford scored four more runs in the fourth inning. With bases loaded, Harlemen cleared them with a double. Clark then put a ball in play to score Harlemen to make it a 14-5 game.

They held Milton Union scoreless in the fourth inning and had a chance to add more runs in the top of the fifth inning. They couldn’t get another run to score and entered the bottom of the fifth down nine runs.

With runners at the corners in the bottom of the fifth, Milton Union was able to get the runner in from third to get the run rule win.

Senior Tegan Canan pitched two innings and had four strikeouts.

With all of the recent rainouts in the last two weeks, Bradford has only played five games the last two weeks. Schaffer said this young team needs to be playing the max amount of games possible to improve.

“I’m devastated when we get rainouts because we need to play 27 games just to get these girls ready for tournament,” Schaffer said.

Bradford is 2-6 on the season with a 1-2 WOAC record. Schaffer said right now, he is still encouraging the girls and just going after it to get used to the speed of the varsity game.

They will play six straight games from April 15-20. They start with home games against Celina on April 15, against Preble Shawnee on April 16 and against Franklin Monroe on April 17 all starting at 5 p.m.

Greenville is 9-4 on the season with a 5-1 MVL record. Newland said they have some good opportunities ahead to get better.

It will start with a home double header against Xenia on April 15 at 5 p.m. They will then host Piqua on April 17 at 5 p.m.

Contact Daily Advocate sports editor Drew Terhall at [email protected].