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By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter 

Medical Lake plays its way into softball playoffs

Cardinal bats power team to wins over Newport, Riverside

 

Last updated 5/10/2018 at 12:12pm



Medical Lake softball finished with a flourish and played themselves back into the Northeast A League playoffs.

Following a 2-1 week with wins of 19-0 over Newport and 15-5 over Riverside sandwiched around a 12-8 loss to Freeman, the Cardinals improved to 5-8 in NEA play, 7-10 overall.

With the regular season headed to a little bit of overtime in order to fill in missing games due to postponements, head coach Tim Blakely said it was uncertain exactly who his team may play.

His guess, when the dust settled, was that Medical Lake would play Lakeside or Deer Park, May 10 at the site of the higher seed. “It’s going to be a tough road,” Blakely said.

Against Newport (0-12, 0-13), the Cardinals banged out 16 hits with the stars being Allison Duncan who was 3 for 3 and four RBIs, Suzanne Shores 3 for 5 with three RBIs and Hannah Petek was 3 for 5 with a pair of RBIs.


“Our offensive days were definitely Tuesday and Thursday,” Blakely said.

In the Riverside game, Shores was 4 for 4 with four RBIs, Haley Musser and Petek were both 3 for 4 with three RBIs.

Musser hit a pair of pitches where the ball traveled over 300 feet, Blakely said, but were not good enough for a regulation home run because Riverside (2-11, 3-14) does not have fences. “She absolutely crushed two of them,” Blakely said.

On one of those, Musser legged it out for an HR, however. Musser was a single shy of hitting for the cycle after also being credited with a double and triple.

As for Freeman (5-8. 7-9), “They are jelling at the right time and they came in hot against us,” Blakely said. The Scotties also used some team speed to their advantage.


Hitting heroes for Medical Lake were Petek, who socked a pair of home runs, going 2 for 3 with five RBIs. Musser was 3 for 4 with two RBIs. Shores was also 3 for 4.

Looking to the playoffs, Blakely said that he’s seen a great deal of improvement in his team in the past several weeks.

“The last time we played Deer Park we ended up losing 7-4,” Blakely said. The last outing against Lakeside was a 4-2 loss, a big improvement over earlier shellacking’s of 15-4 to the Stags and 16-0 to the Eagles.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.

 

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