Document text
Raider harriers triumph vs. OIT; weekend sports roundup Wire Reports KLAMATH FALLS - Southern Oregon University's men's track and field team eased past the host squad at the six-team Oregon Tech Invitational Saturday. The Raider men finished with 180 points, besting Oregon Tech (145) by 35. Kelala Poumpey took first in both the men's 100- and 200-meter dash. On the women's side, OIT won with a combined score of 176 as Heather Radke won dual events in the triple jump and the high jump. Softball At Klamath Falls, the two-time defending champion Oregon Tech softball team kept its Cascade Conference title hopes alive by sweeping the 18th-ranked Raiders, 2-1 and 14-3 on Saturday. The Owls (17-15, 5-3) won a Game 1 pitching duel with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning when sophomore Grace Fagan doubled home Lisa Erwert from second base. Raider all-star pitcher Brandi Brown was saddled with the loss despite surrendering only six hits, whiffing six and allowing no earned runs in 7 1/3 innings. SOU (5-3 CCC) suffered its most lopsided loss in the program's three-season modern era in Game 2, yielding a program-worst 13-run, nine-hit second frame. Senior third baseman Angie Chaplin went 4-for-6 in the twin bill to lead SOU batters. The Raiders (19-8) bounced back Sunday to split a twin bill against Western Oregon, losing 3-2 and winning 9-1 at University Field in Ashland. The win against in-state NCAA Div. II rival snapped SOU's three-game losing streak. Senior pitcher Allison Sempsis whiffed 11 batters and wiggled out of several jams to lead the Wolves (18-11) to a narrow win in Game 1, while Brown won her 17th game of the season (17-6) and knocked in four runs in a six-inning rumble in the nightcap. Southern exploded from a mid-season hitting slump and halted the school's longest winless streak since 2001 with 13 hits in Game 2, including a 3-for-3 effort by sophomore all-star infielder Hayley Varley. Grizz swept again By Chris Miller Ashland Daily Tidings The Ashland High softball team was all but shut down by Crater's pitching twosome of Jenni Bittle and Janelle Cristofaro, Saturday at North Mountain Park. Bittle and Cristofaro combined for 23 strikeouts in the doubleheader, as the Comets swept the Grizzlies, 3-2 and 4-0. The losses send Ashland to 0-4 in the Southern Oregon Conference, while Crater improved to 2-2 in league play. Bittle started off the opening game by striking out six of the first seven batters she faced, while Cristofaro K'd five of her first seven in Game 2. "Our hitting is coming along in practice and it's getting better, but we're a young team and we faced some great pitching and we're not always ready to hit the ball," Grizz head coach Rich Beugli said. "They are not in a position to hit the ball when it's pitched. We work on it in practice, then when it comes to the game, we're not there." Errors have been the Achilles heel of the Grizzlies' early season defeats. Against Crater, defensive miscues were held to a minimum, as Ashland committed only four errors. Junior third baseman Zara Seligson may have been the defensive star of the game, making nine put-outs without an error. But the errors Ashland did commit proved costly. In the second inning of Game 1, senior starting pitcher Megan Beugli fielded a routine grounder, then overthrew junior first baseman Aimee Jeska. The overthrow came back to haunt Beugli moments later when Cristofaro scored on a Crystal Huntley double to right field. Then Crater added to its 1-0 lead. With baserunners on first and third, a throwing error on junior shortstop Jackie Renteria scored Sam Womelsdorf. "We've been working really hard on our defense to get better," Jeska said. "Because we've been having like one inning where we really fall apart, but we're doing a lot better." Bittle proved to be human in the bottom of the third, when she gave up her only walk of the game to Seligson. Then senior Tessa Maurer ripped a single to left to give the Grizz runners on the corners. Maurer showed some heads up baserunning, slowly stealing second to get a throw to the base, while Seligson scored from third. Crater added a third run in the sixth when Bittle knocked a double to centerfield - one of the Comets' 13 hits - scoring Cristofaro. Ashland again closed the gap to one run in the bottom of the sixth, when Jeska crushed a towering triple over the rightfielder's head. Jeska scored when the next batter, sophomore Alysse Carlson, bunted her home. "I've been working on hitting in practice," Jeska said. "I hit them pretty good last year so I was looking for something to hit." Although the Grizz didn't get much aluminum on the ball, they did show off some nifty baserunning. Both runs they scored came from baserunners distracting the Crater defense, by either running slowly or acting as if they were caught halfway between bases. "We made some things happen on the basepath that were really nice," Beugli said. "They are a good team and we were able to rattle them a little bit. We just needed another hit or two." The Grizz went down in order three times in the opener, including the seventh. That's when Bittle recorded two of her 13 strikeouts, sitting sophomore Tiffany Thompson-Rodgers down on three-straight pitches to end the game. In the nightcap, the Grizz never challenged. Jeska, who started Game 2, walked the first batter, then watched her score first blood on a passed ball. Beugli came back to pitch in the third, but Crater added another run that inning plus two more in the sixth, when Cristofaro and Huntley hit back-to-back shots to center. The Grizz managed just one hit in Game 2, six on the day. Beugli recorded one of her two hits off Cristofaro in the fourth inning, a single up the middle that rolled between Cristofaro's legs. Then Beugli became the third Grizzly player to get hit in the face with the ball. On a steal attempt, Beugli's slide into second seemed to make Crater shortstop Tyler Sutherland swing down sharply, catching Beugli in the face with a ball-loaded glove. Beugli dusted herself off, went to the dugout, retrieved her glove and went back to the mound to pitch. At the end of the day, nearly every Grizzly player had a bloody knee, or worse. In Game 1, junior designated hitter Jenna Randall came to the plate for her second at-bat. With the bases loaded, Randall fouled the first pitch off her face, breaking her nose. "Those things happen just playing good hard softball," Beugli said. "Nothing was done intentionally, so those things just happen." The rough and tough Grizzlies face a difficult road schedule for the next two doubleheaders. Next Saturday they face the Roseburg Indians, then a week later they take on Eagle Point. Ashland baseball ekes out thrillers By Kris Henry For The Tidings CENTRAL POINT - Playing the role of hero can be a funny thing: It just takes one moment of greatness to earn that title. And while hero status flopped back-and-forth between Ashland and Crater baseball players during an epic Southern Oregon Conference affair Saturday, Ashland senior Chase Cook held firm to the notion that his time would come. And when it did - in his eighth at-bat - the right fielder answered with a booming two-run homer to break a 14-all tie and lift Ashland to a thrilling 17-15, 12-inning triumph in Game 1 of the SOC doubleheader. "To be honest, when I hit it, I didn't think it had a chance," Cook said of his first homer of the season, "but it just kept going." The excitement didn't let up in Game 2, with Ashland (6-3, 2-2 SOC) using a sixth-inning solo homer by Zack Miedecke to tie the game and Wes Tygerson supplying an RBI single in the ninth to lift the Grizzlies to a 5-4 victory. "That was two tough ballgames," said Crater coach Jim Powell. "Obviously we would have liked to get at least one of them, but that's the way the game is. There's nothing you can do put pick yourself up and get ready for the next game." Anhorn Field had already been the site of a game for the ages by the time Cook came up to bat for the eighth time in Game 1. Ashland opened a 10-1 lead after three innings of play, and that difference could have been even more had Crater left fielder Andrew Norum not made a spectacular diving play in foul territory to halt a bases-loaded threat in the bottom of the third. Trailing 11-1 in the fourth, the Comets took advantage of four Ashland errors to score four runs and keep the 10-run rule out of effect in the next inning. Given a second life, Crater (3-4, 1-3) tacked on eight runs in the fifth to take an improbable 13-12 lead. The two teams then exchanged standout relief pitching efforts to slow the scoring spree, but not before Ashland could tie the game and send it into extra innings at 13-all. Both teams added a run in the 11th inning, and all-the-while Cook patiently waited for a breakthrough. The right fielder had only one hit - an RBI single in the fourth - to his credit as he stepped to the plate for the eighth time with one on and two out in the top of the 12th. "I had choked two times in a row when I came up in the 12th, so I was just glad to get another chance," Cook said of his thoughts entering the batter's box. "I was just looking for a hit." But when served up a chest-high fastball by Crater's Evan Seegmiller - the Comets' fourth pitcher of the game - Cook re-directed the offering over the 340-foot sign on the left-center field fence. "I had hit the ball pretty hard all day, just at people," Cook said of his previous at-bats. "I guess it just came up for me when we needed it most." While Cook's game-turning blast stole the show, it was merely the last in a series of great plays as each team had its share of MVP moments in the opener. Ashland's Chris Presicci went 4-for-5 with two RBIs and two runs, with Chad Hegdahl going 5-for-8 with two RBIs and three runs and Tygerson going 5- for-6 with two RBIs and four runs. Arron Nelson added his first varsity home run and finished with four hits, while Bryan Clevenger added another homer to help him post two RBIs and three runs for the Grizz. Maybe the most notable performance for Ashland, however, came from junior reliever Micah Weston, who came on in relief of James Page during the fifth inning. While Weston couldn't quiet Crater's bats in that eight-run frame, he quickly regrouped over the next seven innings to keep hope alive for the Grizzlies. Weston faced five or fewer batters in all but one of his final seven innings. On the home side of the field, Crater's Colin Schoonover, Adam Reed and Sean Teaters each had three hits to pace the Comets, with Teaters driving in three runs. Crater got two RBIs from Schoonover, Joe Kahut and Tom Hammond, while Norum and Gary Gomes each scored three times. Kahut drove in both his runs during the Comets' fifth-inning surge, with his double to deep center field tying the game at 12-all. Hammond then smacked an RBI single up the middle to give Crater its first - and only - lead of the game. Crater scored seven of its eight runs with two outs in the fifth. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -