Lady Vikings swept in two twin bills
A new year means greater hopes for the Big Bend CC Lady Vikings softball team in 2011.
YAKIMA - After a rough weekend, the Big Bend Lady Vikings' strong 2011 season hit a bumpy patch en route to a hoped for winning season.
The Lady Vikings lost 3-1 and 8-0 at Wenatchee Valley College on Friday and then followed those results up with 3-2 and 11-4 losses at Yakima Valley CC the next day to fall to 18-22 overall and 8-18 in the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges (NWAACC) East Division with the season's final two games left to play.
The Lady Vikings can't finish less than seventh in the East and have a slight chance of forging a sixth-place tie with a lot of help during the upcoming weekend's competition.
Still, considering the last three years Big Bend won a combined 14 games, this season indicates a definite turnaround.
In the losses against WVC (35-5, 21-5), the Lady Vikings had a combined nine hits in the two losses.
"The first game was an exciting one that we came up short on," Big Bend head coach Jeremy Iverson said. "We were leading 1-0 and had two outs in the bottom of the seventh. Our pitcher, Shantel McCashland made one mistake the whole day."
With runners on first and second that mistakes was a three-run walk off home run that gave Wenatchee the win.
Once again the first game would be the more dramatic of a Big Bend doubleheader as Big Bend found itself tied 2-2 going into Yakima Valley's final at bat.
But an error in the bottom of the seventh allow the lead runner for YVCC to get on to second base and eventually score the winning run.
McCashland took the loss while Jessica Wald, Kali Heller, and Bailey Ritchie all had two hits a piece for Big Bend.
In the second game, Big Bend broke out to a 4-1 lead after the first inning, but YVCC (20-21, 10-16) bounced back with five runs in their half of the third inning and four more two at bats later.
A split of the two games would have kept Big Bend tied for sixth in the East.
Big Bend wraps up their season with two home games with the College of Spokane, Saturday, starting at noon.