Having split with Central Woodstock in the regular season, the Bull Run District championship was one last tune up before the Mountaineers break off into Conference 35 play next week. Facing the BRD player of the year in Bekah Ansbro, the Mountaineers had to dig out of a late hole to get the job done. Behind a rally in the bottom of the sixth Madison picked up the rubber game with Central to the tune of a 3-1 victory.
“Right before the big inning I told them that winning games like this are what championship teams do,” said Mountaineers coach Jesse Yowell. “We had a lot of opportunities and didn’t execute against them once before and lost 1-0. You have to play defense and you have hit against them. The girls came together and did that.”
The game was scoreless until the top of the fifth inning. Before that both teams squandered a handful of scoring opportunities with Madison missing its chance in the first and third innings and Central coming up short in the second and fourth.
Finally in the fifth the Falcons broke the deadlock with a two-out single, walk and then an RBI double from Ansbro. However, Madison’s Megan Shifflett worked her way out of the jam with an inning ending strikeout.
The Mountaineers got a 2-out triple from Sam Atwell in the bottom of the fifth, but an infield fly in the next at bat put the inning to rest. Thing went different though in the bottom of the sixth though.
“We talked about it going into (the sixth) that we had to get consecutive base hits if we wanted to score,” said Madison senior Bailey Colvin. “We’ve seen (Ansbro) two times already and she throws a lot of first pitch strikes so that’s what I went up there looking for.
The game winning rally started with a 1-out single from Colvin. In the following at bat Samantha Breeden hit an RBI double and the game was tied.
“We’ve got a nice rivalry with them because they (and Orange) are the only teams we split with this year,” Breeden said. “We came into this game wanting to come out on top and knew we had something to prove. Bailey come out with a hard hit single. Since she did that for the team I knew had to at least move (the runner) over to the best of my ability.”
The Mountaineers took a 2-1 lead in the next at bat when Reagan Clatterbaugh reached base on an error. Finally, with two out, Shifflett helped herself out with an RBI single to make it a 2-run game.
In the top of seventh, Shifflett retired three of the four batters she faced and ended the game on a strikeout, her eighth of the night.
For Madison, Colvin finished 3 for 3 while Atwell went 2 for 4.
The Mountaineers jump into Conference 35 on Monday where it will host Stonewall Jackson in the first round at 6 p.m.
