ST. JOHN | The dry-erase board inside the Lake Central softball dugout had a simple message on it Thursday.
"Control what you can control," it said, with the "you" underlined.
The weather and field conditions were not in the players' hands. Their bats, however, were.
Sam Terry was chief among the Indians who used a hot bat to battle the cold weather. The senior catcher improved her batting average to .544 and drove in five runs, including the final two that ended the game, in a 10-0 win over visiting Michigan City in a Duneland Athletic Conference matchup.
"I don't focus on the weather, just doing my job up there," Terry said. "We work every day to do whatever we can to get ready for the next game."
After being kept off the field all week due to rainouts, the Indians (14-4, 6-1) wasted no time getting to M.C. starter Peyton Webb, who had frustrated L.C. in the teams' previous three meetings.
Terry drove in the first run with a double, plated two more in the second with a triple and then singled in the bottom of the fifth with one gone to change an 8-0 lead to a 10-0 final.
"The last time we played them close into the seventh," Terry said. "We didn't want to have to wait that long today."
Terry was 3-for-3 in falling a home run short of the cycle; she's 31-for-57 (.544) this season. She and Kayla Bishton each scored twice for the Indians, and Kaitlyn Ranieri added two RBIs. No other Indians players had more than one hit, as L.C. reached on eight walks and two errors.
"It was huge to jump on them early," L.C. coach Jeff Sherman said. "We hit a lot of gap shots."
Lily Del Toro struck out eight Wolves hitters in five innings for the Indians. She allowed two hits and just one walk.
The Wolves (5-4, 4-4), meanwhile, have had seven nonconference games postponed by weather and were playing their first competition in seven days.
"Give Lake Central credit, they hit the ball no matter what," M.C. coach Candy Feare said. "They have disciplined hitters. We didn't hit the ball well."
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