Menasha shuts out Xavier softball in both ends of Bay Conference twinbill
By Dustin Riese
For AppletonSportsPage.com
MENASHA – The 2024 softball season hasn’t gone according to plan for the Xavier Hawks as they have stumbled out of the gate a bit. With a chance to move up in the Bay Conference standings and potentially turn their season around, the Hawks took on Menasha for a doubleheader on Thursday afternoon.
Much like it has been for a majority of the season, runs were tough to come by for the Hawks as they were shutout in both contests, falling 13-0 and 18-0. Xavier is now 3-8 overall and 1-6 in the Bay Conference, while Menasha improves to 6-6 and 4-3 in conference play.
“The Xavier Hawks softball team came out and battled as a team despite our injuries and playing in multiple different positions,” Xavier coach Billie Munoz said. “The Hawks have a true ‘team’ attitude”
It was a pair of five-run innings, in the second and fourth, for the Blue Jays that did the Hawks in during Game 1. That came after University of Memphis commit Addison Lund opened the scoring with a two-run single in the first to put the Blue Jays in front for good 2-0.
Xavier looked to respond in its half of the second with Ella Bauman and Caroline Vanden Heuvel picking up a pair of singles, only to be stranded.
That set the stage for the Blue Jays to break things open in the second inning as they pushed across five runs to take a 7-0 lead. While there were a ton of hits to set the Menasha offense up, it was the costly mistakes that led to the runs as several walks and an error opened the floodgates.
After tacking on another run in the third off another error to push the lead to 8-0, the Blue Jays put the game out of reach in the fourth as the Hawks had no answers. Patience was the key for Menasha in this one as five walks, including four with two outs led to three runs coming home while a pair of errors and a passed ball pushed the lead to 13-0. Mary Kendall worked a walk in the top half of the fifth, but she was the final baserunner for the Hawks.
Although Game 1 didn’t go their way, the Hawks had a chance to earn a split as they sent Elsa Dvoracek to the mound in the second game. Like in the opener, costly errors extended innings longer than the Hawks would have liked and allowed for five unearned runs to score. That proved especially costly later in the game as Menasha pushed across 12 runs in their final two at-bats to cruise to the 18-0 win.
It was a much better start for the Hawks as Dvoracek retired the Blue Jays in order in the first. Once the second inning rolled around, it was the Blue Jays’ offense getting to work as a Taylor Papendorf double set things up for Lund, who came through with another RBI single. Lund would later come home to score on an error with Isabella Timm adding a sacrifice fly to make things 3-0. Errors continued to plague the Hawks in the third as they gave away two early outs, which proved costly when Papendorf connected for an RBI double to push the lead to 5-0. Papendorf came around to score two hitters later on the Gabrielle Farr single as Menasha was out big early again 6-0.
Through three innings, the Hawks managed to put just two runners on base, with Bauman and Abby Ourada earning walks. Menasha continued to make noise in the fourth using patience and errors to keep the pressure on. Kelsie Mohr kept the line moving with an RBI double to stretch the lead to 8-0 with Papendorf adding her fourth and fifth RBI to make things 10-0.
In total, seven runs came across to score in the top half of the fourth with Bella Sonnenberg and Timm adding the other two runs to make things 13-0. It took four innings for the Hawks to grab their first hit of the game as Addison Hervey picked up a two-out single in the fourth only to be left stranded on the bases. The Blue Jays closed out the scoring with five more runs in the fifth, anchored by a Lund three-run homer as she inches closer to the school record for homers.
Xavier will look to rebound when it hosts Reedsville for a nonconference game Saturday at 11 a.m.