Tiger Cubs suffer 5 inning loss to North Central, 17-7

Greencastle's softball squad dropped its fifth consecutive game Wednesday night, falling to North Central (Farmersburg) 17-7 in five innings.

The Thunderbirds struck in every inning, jumping out to a 10-0 lead in the third before the hosts could respond.

Courtney Adams singled in Alex Basile to get the Tiger Cubs on the board in the bottom of the third. Danielle Thomas' sacrifice fly plated Riley Seahorn to make the score 10-2 after three innings.

North Central scored another run in the fourth before plating six in the top of the fifth, including a towering two-run shot from Thunderbird pitcher Christian Chambers.

Even though they were down fifteen runs going into the bottom of the fifth, Greencastle would not go quietly.

Kylie Smotherman started the inning off with a single, followed by singles from Basile, Seahorn and Adams, which plated a run.

Thomas reached on an error while another run scored. A wild pitch plated a third run before Candice Phillips punched a fourth run across with another single.

Erynn Beck plated the fifth run of the inning on the sixth single from the Tiger Cubs before Chambers got three consecutive outs to close the game with runners on second and third.

Greencastle head coach Dave Keller said the squad didn't have it Wednesday night.

"We obviously didn't play our best game. We've got some things to figure out. We're trying to get through injuries like everybody else does," Keller said.

"We just didn't have a very good ballgame. We've got two pretty good pitchers, and they both had off nights. They're going to have off nights and we recognize that."

Keller added that, in the midst of the five-game slide, the squad was beginning to pick up on things to work on.

"Sometimes you have to learn how to lose. Part of losing is that it needs to sting a little bit. Sometimes, I think you get too used to losing and you don't go home and try to figure out what went wrong," Keller said.

"Now, I think they're starting to do that a little bit. I'm hoping we'll have good practices tomorrow and Friday and come in Monday night against Monrovia ready to go," Keller added.

"I was really proud of the way we caught life. We just need to do that in the first inning, not in the fifth inning trying to stay alive in a ballgame."

At Greencastle

North Central 262 16 -- 17

Greencastle 002 05 -- 7

WP -- Chambers

LP -- Basile

HR -- Chambers

Next game -- Greencastle hosts Monrovia next Monday.