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Kirby strikes out 11 Eagles in Stonewall softball win
Things are going your way when your pitcher’s bad outing involves 11 strike outs.
Such is the story for Stonewall Jackson (10-3 overall, 5-3 district) and team ace Melissa Kirby (9-3). The right-handed senior tossed all seven innings for the Raiders last Friday in Manassas as part of a 5-3 win over Cedar Run District rival Liberty (3-8, 1-6).
The home-field win came despite Kirby not having “her best stuff,” according to Raiders coach Jason Koch.
“Her change up was not good at all,” he said, noting his hurler tossed complete games three days in a row. “Usually, she can rely on her change up. She usually has a little zip on her fastball (too).”
Kirby threw solid until the sixth inning. With teammate Brittany Aubrey on first base and her team trailing 5-1, Liberty third baseman Danielle Morgan drilled a hanging change up to the centerfield wall for an easy double.
Gina Nery then delivered an RBI single to left field that closed the gap on the scoreboard to 5-3 in favor of Stonewall.
“I noticed when Danielle came up and she looked at me and she (said), ‘I’m going to get on,’” recalled starting Liberty pitcher Tyler Ezzo, who wore a bright smile while greeting Aubrey and Morgan after they crossed the plate. “And also with Gina… She looked at me and she goes, ‘This girl’s mine,” talking about the pitcher. She knew she was going to get a hit.”
“Rally time! Rally time!” Ezzo yelled from the dug out as catcher Kendall Aubrey came up to bat.
Stonewall put up a defense rally instead, forcing the catcher into a double play. Two batters later, Kirby caught Kailyn Logan swinging at some high heat to end the top half of the inning.
Liberty also left runners on the corners in the seventh, which basically cost the Eagles the game.
“That’s the way it’s been all year,” claimed Eagles coach Charlie Padgett. “We’re one hit away from winning five or six ball games.”
On the other side of the field, Stonewall has managed to do something Liberty has not: close out games.
The Raider batters delivered with runners in scoring position twice in the bottom of the fifth: once with the bases loaded and once with runners on second and third.
After Koch hollered from the third base coaches’ box, “Get your sweet spot, Kase,” Stonewall catcher Kasey Miller lined a 2-0 pitch right past the right side of Ezzo’s head and into center field to bring pinch runner Emily Mullinax from third.
Ezzo then forced a third-to-home-to-first double play. But with two runners in scoring position, Liberty gave up the margin of Stonewall’s victory on an RBI double to the left-centerfield fence by Susie Finzel.
Padgett said he should have brought in closer Billie Trussell when Ezzo ran into trouble in the fifth, but figured his starter had one more good inning left in her.
“I’ve always heard… (if) you get crushed by a team, you have a sucky team,” noted Padgett. “If you lose by one or two runs, it’s coaching,”
Ezzo said she disagreed with what she was asked to throw in the fifth.
“We had a little trouble with pitches and stuff and pitch calling,” she said, later adding, “But then, once we got all of that taken care of, I guess we kind of got out of that. And it seemed like it almost lit a fire under us and we came back.”
Like the Stonewall baseball team, the softball girls are coasting in third place behind Battlefield and Loudoun Valley. However, given the strength of Kirby, who threw a no-hitter March 25 against Potomac, Koch likes his team’s chances in the second half of the season.
“We definitely have some confidence now that we can play with everybody in the district,” he said. “It’s always going to be a close game.”
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