Published: May 20, 2008 12:14 am            

CLASS 2A SECTIONAL: Generals sent home by Brownstown, 3-2

'Too many mistakes' doom Clarksville

CLARKSVILLE — Clarksville coach Tim Hauber says if you could sum up his team’s entire season in seven innings that Monday’s 3-2 loss to Brownstown in the Class 2A Sectional opener was pretty much the way to do it.

A few mistakes gave away runs, and an inabilty to produce with runners in scoring position proved to be the deciding factor in the outcome.

“Too many mistakes,” said Hauber. “In the field, at the plate — we gave runs away. We’re weren’t good enough to do that.”

Brownstown junior Whitney Tormoehlen smashed a double to deep centerfield in the bottom half of the seventh inning, sending the Braves forward into Wednesday’s semifinal against Pekin Eastern at 4:30 p.m.

“People might think we lost this in our last at-bat, but it happened a lot sooner than that,” Hauber said. “That Brownstown kid got the big hit there but we were lucky just to be in that position.”

The Braves survived after allowing Clarksville to knot things up at 2-2 in the top of the seventh.

A leadoff double was promptly followed with a single by Tara Henderson to put runners on the corners with no outs.

Clarksville’s Amy Bisinger then followed with a single that scored Taylor Carta and moved pinch runner Kelsey Hall to third with no outs.

Brownstown then pulled starting pitcher Jessica Peters in favor of freshman Cheyenne Riley. The next batter, Bronte Miley, hit a slow roller to third that led to a play at the plate with Hall being tagged out for the first out of the inning.

With plenty of work left to do, Riley worked out of the jam in impressive fashion. She fanned two of Clarksville’s top hitters — Kelly Betz and Kelsey Becker — with runners on second and third to keep the score tied a 2-2.

“Their girl really didn’t have anything overpowering,” said Hauber. “But she stepped right in there in a big spot and got our 3-4 hitters with strikeouts.”

After Clarksville scored a run in the second to go up 1-0, Brownstown grabbed a 2-1 lead in the fourth — an inning in which Clarksville committed a pair of errors that resulted in two unearned runs.

Peters and Alli Nolan each had RBi singles in the frame.

The winning rally started in the seventh with one out, when Paige Hinderliter and Jade Conrad hit back-to-back singles in front of Tormoehlen, whose shot to centerfield eluded the glove of Miley and allowed the winning run to score with ease.

“Same story all year,” said Hauber. “Different game, same story. We made the same mistakes all year we made in this one today and it caught up to us.”



CLASS 2A CLARKVILLE SECTIONAL

CLARKSVILLE 010 000 1—2 8 4

BROWNSTOWN 000 200 1—3 7 1

W — Peters. L — Betz. 2B — Carta (C), Tormoelen (B).

Record — Clarksville 18-9

        

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