LAKEPORT — While Clear Lake”s speedy leadoff hitter, Kaila Sterbank, makes her living hitting slow grounders or smacking line drives to all fields for the Cardinals, a strong northwest wind blowing out Thursday afternoon was just too tempting to pass up.
Sterbank took advantage. Her three-run home run to straightaway center field in the bottom of the third inning — a well-struck fly ball that got caught up in the stiff wind — put the finishing touches on Clear Lake”s 17-0 non-league softball victory over the Willits Wolverines at Lakeport.
Clear Lake scored 11 times in the bottom of the second to open up a 13-0 lead and Sterbank”s three-run blast in the third capped a four-run outburst in that inning. The lone senior on the Cardinals” roster tripled in her previous bat, blooping a ball into right field and hustling around the bases.
“Today was a good day to hit it up there,” Clear Lake coach Gary Pickle said of Sterbank”s home run, which the jet-stream-like breeze latched onto. “She hit it pretty well, but the wind helped it.”
While the wind was a friend to the batters, the pitchers had to throw into it, and that wasn”t nearly as much fun.
“It”s hard to throw when the wind is blowing like that and it”s hard not to get distracted, anybody would,” Pickle said. “The pitchers and infielders had dirt blowing into their faces all day.”
While a young Willits squad had trouble keeping its focus, a more experienced Clear Lake club managed to play through it.
“It might have actually helped us at the plate,” Pickle said. “When the strike zone got a little bigger (as the Cardinals built their lead into double digits), it forced our hitters to be more focused at the plate. We hit better when that happened.”
Even so, Pickle summed up the wind-blown non-league contest by saying, “It was kind of a miserable game with the wind blowing like that. They (Wolverines) struggled to throw strikes.”
Two Willits pitchers combined to walk 11 in the game, which was called after 4 ? innings because of the 10-run rule. The Wolverines” defense didn”t help matters, committing seven errors, most of them on routine plays.
Clear Lake (9-2) had only six hits although four of them went for extra bases, including the two by Sterbank. Rylie Gabehart went 2-for-3 with a triple and two RBIs and Coree Alexander added a RBI double.
Losing pitcher Paula Crews didn”t survive the second inning, facing the first eight batters and retiring only one — that on Liz Sanderson”s RBI groundout — before giving way to reliever Stephanie Duran. Clear Lake sent 16 batters to the plate in the inning, one that featured four straight bases-loaded walks.
Winning pitcher Emily Wingler settled down after a shaky first inning to toss a complete-game two-hitter. She struck out six and walked two.
“She needs to be sharper when she goes out there and we talked about that, but she settled into it,” Pickle said. “There toward the end she was throwing her breaking stuff really well.”
Crews blooped a single behind first base with two outs in the top of the third for Willits” first hit. Amanda Winters grounded a single into left in the top of the fifth for the only other hit by the Wolverines (2-5).
The Cardinals return to action Tuesday in Middletown at 4 p.m.
