The Collinsville High School softball team was held to a single digit run total for the first time this season, but Jersey Community High School could not hand the team its first loss.
Caitlyn Brombolich / Photo by Roger Starkey
The Kahoks (4-0) jumped in front of the Panthers (1-1) early Thursday, building a 5-0 lead, before hanging on for a 7-3 win. Samantha Buettner started the four-run second with a single and advanced to third when Sarah Scrum’s line-drive double rolled all the way to the right, centerfield fence.
Buettner scored the first run of the game when Sidney Bost hit a soft ground ball to the right side of the infield. The throw home beat Buettner, but her foot narrowly beat the catchers’ tag.
Scrum then scored on a passed ball and Bost sprinted home on a wild pitch shortly thereafter. Kassidy Smith capped the inning with an RBI single that plated Jessica Ledford. Smith finished the game 3-3, with two doubles and two RBI. The Panthers did manage to keep Smith inside the park for the first time in 2014. She belted four home runs in the first three games of the season, touching all four bases at least one time in those games.
After allowing back-to-back, two-out singles in the first inning, Caitlyn Brombolich retired the next 10 batters. Head Coach Cindy Kolda said Brombolich settled into a groove after adjusting to how the umpire was calling the game.
“Once they (Brombolich and catcher Smith) figured out the umpire’s strike zone, they did a good job of pounding it,” Kolda said.
Jersey scored two unearned runs in the fifth, aided by two errors, and tacked on another in the sixth, to narrow the Collinsville lead to 5-3.
Brombolich led off the bottom of the sixth with a single and scored when Ledford followed with a line drive single that bounced past the Panther right fielder and rolled all the way to the wall. The speedy Ledford circled the bases to give the Kahoks their final margin of victory, 7-3.
Jersey was retired in order in the top of the seventh, giving Brombolich her second complete game and her second win. She surrendered five hits and struck out four. Only one of the three runs charged to Brombolich was earned. She did not walk a batter in seven innings of work.
Up next for the Kahoks is the conference opener Tuesday at the Collinsville Jaycee Sports Complex. The 4:30 p.m. contest is the first of six home games in five days for Collinsville.
