Coming off a four-game win streak, the Olympic softball team was riding high on Monday. The Trojans were looking to improve their streak to five against Port Angeles.
Earlier in the season Olympic travelled to Port Angeles and held the Roughriders to a close game to the end when Port Angeles hit a walk-off homerun to win by 1.
That fifth straight win failed to materialize, as the Roughriders ran over the Trojans.
Port Angeles started off solidly, but for the first few innings the Trojans stayed in reach. Going into the fifth inning, Port Angeles was up on the Trojans 4-1.
Olympic had just had a strong inning, bringing in a run to score, but that would prove to be their last strong inning and their only point of the game.
Olympic head coach Dusty Anchors said he could tell things weren’t going well even before the game started.
“I’ve been around this game for twenty years and my gut started telling me even before we started playing that something wasn’t right,” Anchors said.
The Roughriders’ offense took off in the fifth inning and the Trojans defense couldn’t keep up.
“After Port Angeles stepped up it got out of hand,” Anchors said.
The first Port Angeles batter reached third on a throwing error by an Olympic infielder and things continued to go downhill from there. Port Angeles ran through the order as batter after batter put pressure on the Trojan defense.
While the Roughriders were hitting well, the real problem for Olympic’s defense was the communication and excessive number of errors.
By the end of the game, Olympic had made eight errors – twice as many as their number of hits.
The game ended early, after the fifth inning, due to a 10-run rule. Once Port Angeles had pushed the score to 11-1 the game was called, ending Olympic’s streak in a strong fashion.
“It’s frustrating,” Anchors said. “Because these girls are all good ball players.”
Olympic’s next game was scheduled for Wednesday, at Bremerton.
Anchors said he’d like to think his team should win, but it depends which team shows up – the team that won four in a row or the team that lost by 10 to Port Angeles.
Port Angeles 1 1 0 2 7 — 1 1 7 0
Olympic 0 0 0 1 0 — 1 4 8
Sarah Steinman and Tori Kutch. Christina Bigelow and Adia Roberts. W – Steinman. L – Bigelow
