Greencastle ends road trip with loss to Crawfordsville

Cassie Alspaugh

CRAWFORDSVILLE -- Despite outplaying the Athenians of Crawfordsville Friday night, Greencastle's softball team ended its long road trip with a 3-2 loss.

"We outplayed them," GHS head coach Dave Keller confessed.

Greencastle collected 10 hits on the night compared to Crawfordsville's four but a couple of defensive miscues in the middle innings cost the Tiger Cubs the win. A fact that bothered Keller after the contest.

"It's tough when you sit there and look at 10 hits and two runs and then they get three runs on four hits," he said.

Mallory Miller pitched a complete game for the Tiger Cubs, throwing five strikeouts, allowing four hits and walking just one. At the plate she was 1-for-4.

Cassie Alspaugh led the Tiger Cubs in hitting; going 3-for-4 while Sarah Land was 2-for-3. Samantha Sillery was strong at the plate also with a 2-for-4 performance.

Last season the Tiger Cubs were looking for an identity and this year they seem just one step away from finding it. Keller's comments after the contest personified this line of thought.

"Last year I would have taken back-to-back 3-2 losses and this year it's a little harder to swallow because we outplayed them. We have just one inning where we had some breakdowns defensively," Keller said. "I'm ready to get back to playing conference games. This was good for us. We should be 6-1 instead of 4-3."

There are always lessons to be learned from losing and it's cliché to say those lessons are "moral victories", but Keller is having none of it. He knows what his team is capable of and those loses sting even more because of it.

"We don't get any moral victories out of loses anymore. We had enough moral victories last year. We'll just keep plugging along," he concluded.

The junior varsity lost 9-7 to drop to 3-2 on the season.

The Tiger Cubs will travel to Cascade at 4:30 Monday.

At Crawfordsville

Greencastle 100 001 0 --2 10 1

Crawfordsville 012 000 x -- 3 4 1

LP -- Miller (2-1)

Next game -- The Tiger Cubs will travel to Cascade at 4:30 Monday.