UPPER LAKE >> The Kelseyville Knights finished their non-league softball game on Wednesday afternoon in Upper Lake with a nice Profitt margin.
Morgan Profitt limited the host Cougars to two hits, shut them out over the final six innings and struck out nine during a 5-1 victory that raises the Knights’ record to 2-1, both of those wins coming at Upper Lake’s expense. Profitt also had two of the Knights’ nine hits, including one of four Kelseyville doubles.
“She was kind of rattled the first few innings but she settled down,” Kelseyville coach Jeff Bour said. “She didn’t have her best stuff today but she was still able to work through it.”
Though Profitt had to work out of a few jams, some of her own creation as she also walked six, the Kelseyville pitcher proved more than up to the task as she was backed by some pretty solid defense.
“We made a couple of mistakes but we did a pretty good job behind her,” Bour said.
Upper Lake (1-2), a 14-4 loser in six innings a week ago in Keleyville, grabbed a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning on a two-out single by Sierra Fugate (2-for-3), who had both of the Cougars’ hits.
“She (Profitt) threw the ball OK but we’re behind on the hitting,” Upper Lake coach Kelly Coburn said of her team’s quiet bats. “We’re just not hitting it.”
Kelseyville pulled even with a run in the top of the second and it remained a tie game until the Knights pushed ahead to stay with a run in the fifth. They added two more runs in the sixth and another in the seventh.
Sophomore shortstop Riley Goff hit the ball hard in all three of her plate appearance for the Knights and ended the day 2-for-3 with two doubles and a RBI. Bailey Couey went 2-for-4 with a RBI.
Losing pitcher Julia Mooney, a freshman, went the distance for the Cougars (1-2). She struck out two, walked two and benefited from solid defense in center field by Chelsie Valdez, who made a couple of nice grabs to rob the Knights of extra-base hits. She also doubled off a Kelseyville runner at second base after one of those catches.
“She’s only a freshman and impresses me so much,” Coburn said of Mooney.
Upper Lake hosts Laytonville in a non-league doubleheader Friday beginning at 2 p.m. Kelseyville hits the road Saturday to play Fort Bragg at 2 p.m.
