course of six innings, tying ….

course of six innings, tying their run output from the season opener against Spencer. After they had suffered from falling behind early in several of their games last week, the co-op flipped the script in Owen, scoring early and adding to that lead throughout the game. Consistency was the name of the game for the offense, as they would score at least once in every inning of the game.

“We were able to be confident in our abilities and find pitches we were able to hit,” head coach Laura Kneifl said. “We can definitely take [that] confidence to transfer over to future games.

Bargender and the Colby/Abby defense would hold the Blackhawks in the early going of the game, not surrendering a run over the first three innings. This allowed the co-op to balloon its lead to eight before Owen- Withee finally got on the board in the bottom of the fourth.

The visitors responded with their most productive inning of the night: a five-run fifth, giving them a commanding 13-1 lead. While it wasn’t completely smooth sailing from there on out, the co-op had done enough that holding even with the Blackhawks for the rest of the game was more than enough to claim the victory.

Of the sixteen hits accumulated over the evening by the co-op, Graff’s solo-shot home run and sophomore Kylie Orth’s two triples were certainly highlights. Graff went three-for-three on the evening and Orth scored four times on two hits and two walks. Also recording two hits for the co-op were freshman Halie VanLuven and Harrison Schmitt.

Bargender went all six innings for the co-op, getting the win and striking out a season high 11 batters. She allowed four runs on seven hits, with only three of those runs being earned.

Having wrapped up the regular season, the Colby/ Abby softball team’s next game will be on Thursday, where they will play in the first round of the WIAA softball tournament. Seeded as the nine seed, they will have to travel to eight seed Rhinelander.