Ryle is possibly playing softball with a lot less stress.
Wednesday was the latest example. The Raiders converted seven Notre Dame errors and eight Maddie Goddard strikeouts into a 13-3 win in five innings.
Ryle (13-6) won its fourth straight and seven of its last eight – a stretch that included clinching the top seed in the 33rdDistrict tournament – which Goddard said was a contrast to the Raiders’ 6-5 record before that.
“We’ve always had talks before the game,” Goddard said. “And sometimes we just talked about ourselves after the game.”
Another word could describe the Raiders: versatile.
In Tuesday’s 11-9 win over Simon Kenton, Ryle’s 11 hits included a double (Laci DeLauder), a triple (Payton Godfrey) and two home runs (Laney Schuster and Grace Tranbargar). Wednesday, Schuster’s three-run double was the lone extra-base hit.
“We just know that we’re good power hitters,” Schuster said. “We’ve got speed here and there in the lineup. We just try to mix it up.”
Notre Dame (8-5), meanwhile, has struggled – the Pandas are 3-4 over their last seven after a 4-1 start.
Goddard’s strategy in the circle was simple – keep her pitches low and away.
“Just trying to keep them off balance going outside, inside,” she said.
Besides the six errors, Notre Dame (8-5) left five on base. Sophomore Abby Turnpaugh struck out five over 4 2/3 innings.
In the second, after Turnpaugh struck out Goddard, Schuster singled and eventually scored on Makenna Hirshey’s bases-loaded walk. An Avery Parsons single scored Lerin Moreland.
Goddard scored on an error in the third, making it 3-0.
Notre Dame scored twice in the fourth inning on singles to make it 3-2 from Ava McKinley and Abby Turnpaugh and two Ryle errors. In the fifth, Rachel Finke’s single plated Addie Zinser with the Pandas’ last run.
“We still have some blunders defensively we have to clean up,” Ryle coach Jarret Goddard said.
For Notre Dame, Ryle’s fourth at-bat was excruciating in about any way you could imagine – 12 Raiders to the plate, three errors, two stolen bases allowed, a fielder’s interference call and five Ryle hits.
The result: seven Raider runs and a 10-2 lead.
“We’re extremely young in some spots,” Notre Dame coach Joe Stephenson said. “We had been cleaning (the errors) up, I’d say, the last two or three games, but every once in a while it rears up its ugly head.”
Ryle ended the game in the bottom of the fifth on Schuster’s double.
NOTRE DAME — 000-21x-x – 3-7-7
RYLE — 021-73x-x – 13-9-2
Turnpaugh, Finke (4) and Finke, Zinser (4); Goddard and Godfrey. WP -Goddard (10-4). LP – Turnpaugh (7-4). 2B – Schuster (R).