Apollo’s offense got hot late—scoring eight runs across the third through sixth innings—to earn a 10-8 district win over the Lady Aces.
Despite the E-gals getting the first hit of the game, after three straight strikeouts for Brooke Hamilton it was Owensboro Catholic who got on the board first.
Senior Camille Conkright earned a leadoff walk and stole her way to third, before an error allowed her to score the first run of the game for the Lady Aces.
Back-to-back doubles from Bailey and Brooke Hamilton quickly made it a 3-0 game, followed by a sacrifice fly from junior Abbie Dukate to send Owensboro Catholic into the second up 4-0.
Thanks to a two-run homer from eighth grader Arianna Ramirez, the E-gals were able to cut their deficit to 4-2. However, the Lady Aces responded swiftly.
Brooke Hamilton gave Owensboro Catholic a two-run home run of its own, before an RBI single from freshman Jaiden Grant gave them a 7-3 lead going into the fourth.
Both teams got a run apiece to send the game into the fifth with the Lady Aces up 8-4. Apollo loaded the bases quickly to start the inning and then junior Alexis Hatchett got two outs.
Seeming like Owensboro Catholic was about to get out of the inning unscathed, E-gals freshman Hessi Johnson hit a missile just over the left center fence to make it 8-8 going into the bottom half of the fifth.
In the sixth, Apollo was able to grab its first lead of the day thanks to junior K’Asia Palmer. In the midst of a strong relief outing, Palmer lined one back up the middle to make it a 9-8 game.
Later in the inning the Lady Aces could’ve escaped with just giving up one run, but an error on a line drive in center made it 10-8.
Owensboro Catholic nearly got a run back on a sacrifice fly, but Conkright tagged too early and the E-gals kept a 10-8 lead going into the bottom of the seventh.
Brooke Hamilton led off the bottom of the seventh inning with a single, but Palmer retired the next three hitters to put a bow on a 10-8 comeback win for Apollo.
“It was a fun, exciting game tonight,” Head Coach Julian said. “Both teams put up a lot of runs and it wasn’t the cleanest game, but both teams competed… Earlier in the game they were answering every time we scored. Luckily, we just kept adding a few more on and luckily scored a little more than they did.”
Julian said that he couldn’t tell you what changed throughout the game for the E-gals offensively, but said that when you string one or two hits together the rest of the team tends to follow.
“Hitting is contagious,” Julian said. “If you have a couple of good at-bats then it just filters down. I don’t know why it’s contagious, but it is. We kind of got contagious tonight.”
Apollo gets its first win of the season with the victory and Julian said that it had a lot to do with them not leaving runners on base in scoring opportunities. Johnson had four RBIs to lead the E-gals, Ramirez had two and Velotta, Crawford and Palmer all had one each.
“Didn’t leave as many runners in scoring position,” Julian said. “We left like 22 runners in scoring position off the first three games. Tonight we still stranded quite a few, but we actually came through with runners on.”
Head Coach Jeremy Phelps said that the Lady Aces needed to do a better job of keeping hitters on their toes, saying that if you can’t change speeds effectively you’ll run into problems.
“They hit the ball hard and we knew they were…” Phelps said. “If you can’t change speeds in this game… I don’t care what speed you throw it at. You give us enough time on a pitching machine, at a certain speed we’re going to hit it. You’ve gotta keep them off balance and you’ve gotta hit your spots.”
When it came to Owensboro Catholic’s offense Phelps said it seemed as though they thrived early on because of their plate approach, something they’ve been improving on in recent times.
“I think our approach [was key],” Phelps said. “We’ve talked a lot about our approach and we didn’t chase a lot of bad pitches. Last week, we had a lot of at-bats that were bad at-bats [with us] swinging at balls over our heads and not knowing what to do.”
However, it was Palmer in relief who had kept the Lady Aces off the board, tossing five innings and allowing one run on four hits while striking out one.
The loss moves Owensboro Catholic to 3-2 overall, as they will look to get back in the win column on the road against Madisonville-North Hopkins Friday at 5:30 p.m. In order to do that, Phelps said they have to remember this game to help them grow.
“Definitely…” Phelps said. “We tell them all the time you either win or you learn. You don’t lose, you win or you learn. We know things we gotta do. Some games that we’ve played, you gotta make those plays. Every play is important. You gotta do the little things right.”
Meanwhile, Apollo now sits at 1-3 with its first win of the season, as they will look to make it two straight when they host Union County at 6 p.m. on Friday.
