Cache tops Hammon 7-2

Tyler Palmateer
Daily Elk Citian 

The tables turned on the Lady Warriors.

Usually it's the Class B No. 2 Hammon High School softball team with all the pressure, but Tuesday it welcomed 4A No. 1 Cache to its field and faced possibly the toughest opponent it's seen all season.

Apparently, the Cache Lady Bulldogs weren't feeling the heat, as they won 7-2. The Lady Warriors hung around for four innings, but couldn't muster up the offense to stay with CHS.

Ranked number one or not, the Lady Bulldogs still had trouble keeping up with HHS pitcher Peyton Walker's fastball, as the senior struck out eight batters for the game. It helped keep her team within 3-2, until a four-run fifth inning from Cache helped seal the game.

"Early on we played well," Hammon head coach Josh Trent said, "then we got down and we started doubting ourselves, I think. By then it was just a little too late to come back."

The teams played two scoreless innings until Cache's Randi Hamilton hit a 2-RBI base hit to right field in the top of the third, which gave the Lady Bulldogs a 2-0 lead. Hammon answered right back in the bottom half of the inning, when Hannah Christian reached on a Cache overthrow, then advanced on a standup double from Peyton Walker.

Chania Walker would groundout to score Christian, then Rachel Keahy tied the game with a single to right field, which scored Peyton Walker's courtesy runner, Abby Morton.

But the Hammon bats went cold after the inning, as Erin Burch's base hit in the bottom of the fourth was the Lady Warriors' final hit of the game.

Cache's Nikki Horton's RBI base hit in the fourth inning gave the Lady Bulldogs a 3-2 lead. The Lady Bulldogs scored four runs on three hits in the top of the fifth, with some help from two Hammon errors, to take a 7-2 lead it never lost.

Trent said his team didn't hit like it normally did, but felt the competition was solid. At this point in the season, with districts being chosen this week, playing good teams is worth the hard-learned lesson.

"I'd rather play a team like that that's good, so we can work on some things, rather than play a team that's not very good and not get any better. [That game] will make us better."

Cache 0   0   2   1   4   0   0 — 7   9   1
Hammon 0   0   2   0   0   0   0 — 2   6   2

(HHS) Walker: 7 IP, eight strikeouts
(CHS) Landmark: 7 IP, two strikeouts