HTC falls to Columbus, Central Lee to start week

WEST POINT — It’s the close losses.
The errors.
The lack of that timely hit that can make a difference.
A lot has piled up on Holy Trinity’s softball team in the last week, and it’s led to frustration.
Monday’s 10-8 loss to Columbus in an SEI Superconference game was the fifth consecutive defeat for the Crusaders, and left coach Loren Menke trying to find the right words.
“We’re just kind of snake-bit right now,” Menke said.
The streak started last week in an 11-0 loss to Louisa-Muscatine, but since then the Crusaders (4-8) have seen too many close defeats. They lost by one run in back-to-back games to Highland and Van Buren County, then 4-0 to West Burlington-Notre Dame on Friday.
“All of these losses, they’ve all been to good opponents,” Menke said. “It’s not like we’re going out and losing to bad teams. We’re playing good teams tough. We’re just not winning. And it’s frustrating.”
In this game, the Crusaders would have innings that were good — a two-run second and a four-run sixth — but they left the bases loaded in both.
“We’ve got to get clutch hits, and we’re not getting those,” Menke said.
And on defense, the Crusaders committed seven errors, leading to five unearned runs.
“We have to be better on defense,” Menke said. “We gave up four runs the other night (against WB-ND), but I think a couple of those runs were unearned. And then we had a bunch tonight. We’re giving other teams too many opportunities.”
Four errors came in Columbus’ four-run second inning as the Wildcats took a 5-2 lead. Columbus added three runs in the fourth and one run each in the fifth and sixth innings.
But Holy Trinity kept the pressure on the Wildcats. The Crusaders got two runs in the fourth on Halie Cain’s home run.
Then came the biggest outburst in the sixth. Cain had a sacrifice fly, Brooke Mueller had a run-scoring single and Kayla Box and Sydney Jarvis had RBIs on bases-loaded walks. But Columbus pitcher Kennedy Woepking struck out Rachel Menke to end the inning.
The Crusaders didn’t get anything going in a 1-2-3 seventh inning.
“If we could have gotten a couple on, we had the top of the order coming up and we could have had a chance,” Menke said.
Cain and Mueller each had two hits for the Crusaders.
Columbus’ Lily Coil hit for the cycle, scoring three runs. The Wildcats had 15 hits.
On Tuesday, the Crusaders fell 14-5 to Central Lee dropping their SEI Superconference record to 3-5 and 4-9 overall.
HTC had a 5-0 lead after the first inning and a half, but couldn’t hold on as the Lady Hawks put up eight in the bottom of the fifth to pull away.