UNION MILLS | Lakewood Park Christian scored early and often against South Central on Tuesday.
The state No. 2 Panthers scored in each of the first five innings in a 9-2 win against the host Satellites in a Class A softball regional championship. Lakewood has won three consecutive regional titles and has beaten South Central in each of the past two years.
The Panthers (24-5) scored an unearned run in the top of the first and never trailed. Hannah Priskorn came around to score on a throwing error. The Panthers added a single run in the second, followed by two in the third and another run in the fourth inning.
“That was a really good start,” Lakewood coach David Carnahan said. “I was proud of our girls for being prepared right out of the gate.”
A run-scoring ground out by Cali Young and a Sam Jackson single plated two runs to get the Satellites (19-10) to within three at 5-2 after four innings.
Lakewood answered with four runs in the top of the fifth. Eight batters came to the plate, and the inning featured a walk, three hits and two South Central errors, which allowed two runs to score. The Satellites finished with three errors in the contest.
“Defensively, we just weren’t on our game,” South Central coach John Hall said. “They hit the ball around. Sometimes we didn’t make the plays or we didn’t know what to do with it.”
Brittan Carnahan hit a double to the fence and later scored on a Suzanne Grimm groundout.
Jaren Lynch was the only South Central player with multiple hits against Mikeila Boroff. She had a pair of singles and also scored a run.
Every Lakewood starter except one had at least one hit. Boroff had three singles and drove in a run. Priskorn, Jaclyn Delagrange and Jamie Budreau each had two hits for the Panthers.
In the circle, Boroff scattered six hits, walked one and had 11 strikeouts to get the win.
Madisyn Walter gave up 12 hits and struck out four in taking the loss for South Central.
“We played them the way we thought they were going to hit; we just didn’t get the plays done,” Hall said.
Please Wait…