River Valley staves off Galion comeback for season sweep
GALION - Coming into a two-game series with Galion this week, River Valley probably should've swept the Tigers with ease on paper.
The Vikings were 13-4 and the Tigers 8-10. But softball isn't played on paper, it's played on the diamond. And after giving River Valley a scare Tuesday night in Caledonia, Galion nearly pulled off a comeback on its home field but came up just short 7-6 on Wednesday.
"We're competing, and it's a good time for us to compete," Galion coach Calli Bauer said. "We started off the year 0-6, and since then we've really turned it around and we're coming together. Our whole lineup is hitting the ball well, we just gotta string things together as a whole. We're still working on believing in ourselves."
A Galion team that won eight games last year, three in 2022 and none in 2021 has already matched the win total of 2023 with games still to be played. And the Tigers have given some quality teams a battle along the way to show how much the program has grown in Bauer's first season at the helm.
"I really think it's just realizing we can compete with these teams," she said. "Our first league game we lost 4-3 against Clear Fork, and seeing the success they've had being tied for first in the league now, we've realized we can compete.
"We can hang with these people and we're scaring a lot of teams. Galion softball hasn't really been super prominent in the MOAC these last few years, and we're making people nervous — it's exciting."
Galion took the lead scoring four runs in the third before the Vikings responded with a trio in the top of the fourth. A fielding error allowed River Valley to tie the game in the fifth before Samantha Woods belted a ball beyond the fences for a three-run home run.
After short fifth and sixth innings for the Tigers, Elliott Freyman robbed Bentley Auld of a home run in left field for the third out in the top of the seventh to give Galion some hope, and momentum, going into the bottom. With two outs, Kaitylyn McKee singled to left field then Kortnie Ganshorn sent one into right field that drew an error allowing McKee to score and Ganshorn to beat the throw back at home to pull within one. Delaney Myers snagged Cecelia Campbell's grounder and flicked it over to Woods for the final out to stave off the Galion comeback attempt.
"We made seven errors last night, and we had one here late," River Valley coach Phil Shepler said. "That's why I called time. I told them to just dive on the ball, play deep and keep the ball in front of you. I don't care if you gotta lay on top of it, you gotta stop the ball. You can't let it go to the fence, especially with three and four hitters coming up. I mean Cece and (Madelyn) Schieber can hit the crap out of the ball."
Both teams struggled in the first two innings stranding a combined three runners on base and striking out five times.
"That first pitcher had us off balance," Shepler said of Adalyn Perry. "We weren't expecting that, and it took us a while to adjust. But we finally adjusted to her, then they brought the pitcher in from last night (Madison Beck) so we had to readjust to her. We did a pretty good job after the first time through the order, I thought we made some adjustments. I said we just needed to attack and they did a better job attacking the second time around."
The win was the Vikings' seventh in the last eight games, only losing to non-league foe Lexington on Monday over that stretch. They've scored 71 runs over that stretch, but allowed 31. And now the focus shifts to the postseason where the Vikings will face the winner of Hebron Lakewood and Bexley in a Division II sectional championship on May 8.
"We have got to fix out defense … and play better," Shepler said. "There's always things to work on for us.
"It's a tough draw for us. We'll have to win three games to get to regionals. We gotta play three tough teams and we'll have to play three good games."
Galion hosts county foe Colonel Crawford in a Division III sectional semifinal on May 7 as the Tigers look for their first postseason win since finishing as regional runner-up in 2019. That would be a huge accomplishment for a program slowly starting to compete again.
"The difference is that the 2019 team knew what winning felt like," Bauer said. "It's not a mystery that other than volleyball, Galion girls sports have struggled at times, we gotta get that winning culture back and be OK with winning. We're slowly getting there … we've already tied the amount of wins we had last year. And we have three more regular season games, then tournament, still coming up. There's exciting stuff happening. We have a couple great leaders on this team that really are pushing us and two freshmen that contribute a ton.
"We're getting there."
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This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: River Valley softball completes sweep of Galion in MOAC play
