Softball

Olivia Wermert went 3-for-4 and drove in four runs, helping the Teutopolis Lady Shoes post an 11-5 victory Saturday over Windsor/Stew-Stras in their opening game of the Casey-Westfield Tournament.

T-Town then dropped a 5-4 decision to Westville in its second game.

In that first game, THS and WSS were tied 5-5 after five innings. But in the bottom of the sixth, the Lady Shoes broke it open.

With one out, Olivia Copple singled, stole second and scored what proved to be the winning run on a base hit by Summer Wall. But T-Town was far from done.

Chloe Hoene and Malea Helmink then delivered back-to-back RBI triples. Another run scored on an error, and after a double by Mallory Bloemer, Wermert capped the six-run explosion with a two-run single.

Olivia Hemmen went all seven innings to get the win. She allowed 11 hits and five runs, while walking two and striking out two.

The second game was close all the way, but Westville hung on to get the one-run win.

T-Town grabbed a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning. After Wall singled and Hoene walked, Helmink came through with an RBI double. Later in the inning, Wermert drew a bases-loaded walk.

Westville tied it in the bottom of the first, but the Lady Shoes went back on top in the second on a run-scoring single by Hoene. Westville then tied in the bottom of the second and took the lead for good, 5-3, with a two-run third.

THS got its final run in the fourth. Copple got a lead-off single, went to second on a wild pitch and eventually scored on a ground out.

Alyssa Tipton took the loss. She pitched six innings, giving up seven hits and five runs. She walked six and struck out seven.

The Lady Shoes are now 13-15. They will play Tuesday at home against Effingham.

By Steve Raymond

ET Sports Report

The first batter for both teams kind of set the tone for the rest of the game.

T-Town’s Summer Wall sent the fifth pitch of the contest sailing over the right-centerfield fence for a lead-off home run.

Effingham’s Raegan Boone lined a double down the leftfield line, but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple.

The Lady Shoes blasted two more round-trippers and kept adding to their lead, while the Lady Hearts struggled to push runs across the plate.

When the final out was recorded, Teutopolis had posted a 7-1 victory Monday afternoon at Effingham.

“That first home run was super exciting,” THS coach Crystal Tipton admitted. “It helped establish momentum for us, that’s for sure.”

“After giving up that home run, it looked like we were going to come right back and score,” Effingham coach Jerry Trigg added. “But then we didn’t. We kept battling to get back to even, but they just kept getting further away from us.”

The long ball was certainly a factor, especially for the Lady Shoes in the decisive fifth inning.

Taegan Webster belted two homers and drove in five runs, helping South Central defeat Teutopolis, 9-6, at home Monday afternoon.

The Lady Shoes had a 4-2 lead when South Central came to bat in the bottom of the fifth inning. But Webster delivered a two-run blast that inning and then added a three-run shot in a four-run seventh that put the Lady Cougars on top to stay.

South Central grabbed a 2-0 lead in the first, but the Lady Shoes scored a single tally in the third and added three more runs in the fourth. Chloe Hoene, who had three hits for T-Town, had an RBI single in the fourth, while the other two runs scored on an error and a ground out by Malea Helmink.

Olivia Hemmen took the loss. She pitched 5.1 innings, allowing nine hits and eight runs.

The Lady Shoes, now 11-10, will play at home today (Tuesday) against Tuscola.

The Teutopolis Lady Shoes dropped a pair of close games Friday at the Newton Round Robin.

The Lady Shoes lost 5-4 to Champaign Central in the first game and then gave up three runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to suffer a 3-2 setback to Freeburg in the second contest.

Against Champaign Central, the Lady Shoes trailed 4-2 and 5-3, but kept coming back.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Mallory Bloemer doubled and later scored on a groundout by Alyssa Tipton to get T-Town within 4-3.

Then in the seventh, trailing 5-3, THS got a lead-off single by Olivia Copple. She later scored on an RBI single by Malea Helmink, but the Lady Shoes couldn’t get the tying run across.

Bloemer had two hits in the game and Helmink drove in a pair. Tipton pitched all seven innings and took the loss.

Olivia Hemmen had a two-hit shutout going into the bottom of the seventh inning in the second game. But Freeburg combined a single, an error and a walk to load the bases. A wild pitch let in the first run, a single tied it and the winning run scampered home after another wild pitch.

The Lady Shoes scored single tallies in the second and third innings. CJ Apke drove in the second-inning run with a base hit and Helmink had a two-out RBI single in the third.

T-Town out-hit Freeburg 9-4, but left six runners stranded on base.

The Lady Shoes, now 11-12, will play Monday at Effingham.

The Teutopolis Lady Shoes traveled to Tolono Unity for a round-robin Saturday and dropped two games.

Big innings were the difference.

In the first game, Quincy Notre Dame scored nine runs in the second, en route to a 13-4 decision.

In the second contest, the host Lady Rockets scored five times in the opening inning and went on to post a 10-2 win.

Quincy Notre Dame combined six hits, two walks and an error to push nine runs across in the second and build an early 11-0 lead.

T-Town got an RBI single from Olivia Copple in the third, a run-scoring ground out by Malea Helmink in the fourth and a two-run single by Helmink in the fifth.

Olivia Hemmen pitched the first two innings and took the loss.

After the five-run first inning, Tolono was never threatened in the second game. The Lady Rockets also had a three-run fourth.

Teutopolis scored single tallies in the second and fifth. Kayleigh Zerrusen had an RBI double in the second and the fifth-inning run scored on an error.

Alyssa Tipton pitched the first three innings and had the loss.

The Lady Shoes, now 11-9, will play Monday at South Central.