The Lady Indians opened at home against the Lady Pirates on March 14. They played Madison at home on March 19 (score unavailable at press time) and travel to March Valley on Wednesday, March 20 for a 3:30 p.m. game.
West Side is scheduled to play Ben Lomand on the road at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20 and travel to Declo on Thursday March 21 for a 4:30 p.m. game.
It was Preston’s first home game since 2022 since the heavy snow last season made the field unplayable.
Preston made the most of its first home game since 2022 as it plated multiple runs in every inning on its way to a 15-5 five-inning victory over fellow Franklin County program West Side on a sunny and dry Thursday afternoon.
“It feels great just being able to actually play as a team together and on the field in the dirt,” Preston right fielder Kylee Chatterton said. “It just feels so nice.”
Chatterton led the offensive charge for Preston and she did so batting in the No. 9 spot. No. 14 smacked a triple to deep right in her first at-bat, roped a ball to West Side left fielder Danika Roberts in her second at-bat and came through with a run-scoring single in her third and final at-bat.
“It definitely felt better than last year, that’s for sure,” Chatterton said. “Yeah, it just felt really good being able to get onto the bases. Especially after that triple, I was like, ‘this is the year; we’re going to have a good season.’”
“It was awesome,” Preston head coach Larry Morrison said of Chatterton’s success at the bottom of the lineup. “If you can work from the bottom up, it’s always a bonus for the team. … She hit the ball. It was awesome. It’s good to have her in that part of the lineup. She succeeded really well there.”
Meanwhile, the Pirates (0-1) hit the ball as well as the Indians (1-0) as both teams finished with six base knocks. The difference was Preston drew 16 free passes, compared to just three for West Side. The hosts were also very aggressive on the base paths as they took advantage of several wild pitches/passed balls, plus when the visitors had some situational miscues throwing it to the wrong cut-off player.
“It’s always one of those things (where) you look kind of wonder if there’s going to be any first-game jitters and being in a gym all year and only having a couple times on the field, but it was awesome,” Morrison said. “We talked about being aggressive on the bases, which we thought we could do. We’ve got a lot of speed on this team and I felt like we grabbed a lot of bases when we could and we were really aggressive.”
This was the Pirates first time playing at all outside, as their field hasn’t been quite ready even for practice. West Side still managed to score in three of the five frames.
“We’ve got a really young team this year,” WS coach Lisa Wade said. “We lost six seniors last year and another one that would be a senior this year, so we lost seven varsity players. So, we’re building and learning, and we’re going to try to have fun doing it.”
Lead-off batter Sydney Parkinson fared well for the Pirates as she lofted a triple to deep center in her first at-bat, reached on an error in her second and came through with another triple in her third. Halle Taylor, batting second in West Side’s lineup, contributed with a pair of runs, hits and RBIs. Taylor had a well-struck run-scoring double in the top of the fourth.
Grace Taylor and Hadley Ashby both singled for the visitors.
“I am excited for this year,” Wade said. “I do think not having so many expectations kind of leaves the sky as the limit at this point because right now we’re kind of the underdog in our district. And I think we can surprise a lot of people, and that’s what our goal is.”
West Side would have plated some more runs if Preston’s infield wasn’t on point. The Indians gobbled up ground ball after ground ball — especially third baseman Averie Madsen — plus catcher Paisley Campbell gunned out a would-be base stealer and was aggressive with her throws all game long.
“Yeah, it was awesome,” Morrison said. “We’ve got a pretty good core group on our infield and for them to turn a (6-4-3) double (play) like that it’s always exciting for them when you can do that in softball because everything’s so fast. And (pitcher) Maysa (Jones) did a good job throwing in the circle and everybody had her back, and it was fun watching them grind.”
Jones struck out seven and walked three in her five innings in the circle for Preston.
Carlie Madsen contributed with four runs and one hit for the hosts, who got three runs from Jones, two RBIs, one base knock and one run from Sydni Cleverly, two runs and one RBI on a sacrifice fly from Raegan Hansen and a pair of runs from Kentli Archibald.
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