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Badger beats Lordstown with late rally

The Braves scored seven runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to earn a big 13-3 victory

Staff photo / Brian Yauger Badger’s Melanie Feuchtgruber crosses home plate against Lordstown Thursday night.

VERNON — After stifling a late rally by Lordstown, the Badger Braves responded, stringing seven runs together in the bottom of the sixth to dispatch the Red Devils, 13-3, in an early-season contest Thursday.

Surrendering three runs in the top of the inning and cutting their 6-0 lead to 6-3 was just the fuel the Braves needed to push back.

“We gave up three, we’ve got to get back out there and get those back. So they did what I asked for once,” Braves coach Greg O’Brien said with a laugh.

The Braves were getting one run at a time early in the contest, but broke through with three runs in the third. During the first three innings, Badger capitalized off three errors to score.

After the Braves tacked on one more run in the fifth off a Julia Toth hit, Lordstown began its rally. Loading the bases off some well-placed hits, the Red Devils scored two off errors and sent an additional run home to cut Badger’s lead in half.

It didn’t last long though.

Molly O’Brien, who rounded the bases three times during the win, sent home Abby Dubelko which opened the floodgates.

Badger methodically extended its lead by stringing base hits together and grabbing extra bases off Lordstown errors. Toth iced the game after crossing home for the second time that afternoon.

The Braves have plenty of experience on this year’s roster. Their main loss from last year’s group is a major one, graduating top pitcher Hunter Bengala. That being said, Badger returns plenty of talent to this squad including senior Jessica Lovesee who recorded two hits and three RBIs on the afternoon.

“We’ve got six seniors and six juniors, so that’s the core of our team there,” O’Brien said. “We’ve got a lot of experience. We lost our number one pitcher last year, but we got some other girls stepping up that are trying to make it work. Right now, all nine are out there working together. We’ve got good people everywhere. They’ve got to work together like tonight to put a full game together.”

Badger moves to 1-1 on the season, with a contest against Windham currently suspended. They’ll travel to Vienna to take on Mathews on Monday.

While not a perfect game, the Braves hope to carry this momentum into Monday’s tilt. That being said, they’re aware that they’ll need to play a better team game against the Mustangs.

“I feel good, but we had some errors tonight,” O’Brien said. We’ve had them each game and we keep telling them that ‘We’ve got to clean that up because we go against some of those teams like Mathews and Chalker and we do that, then it’s not gonna be as forgiving. Fielding and simple throwing errors, we can’t have that. So that’s a focus.

“We’ve got to keep it in there, keep our heads in the game. We’re going to make mistakes. But when you do, you’ve got to go up for the next pitch. Let it go and get back out there. They’ve been doing that well this year even when we have had a bit of a bad inning. They keep their heads up and they keep going. That’s the most important thing.”

Lordstown suffers a loss in its first game of the season. They travel to Ashtabula to take on the St. John Heralds on Wednesday.

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