Staff
The Couchiching Lady Raiders started off with a small ball strategy and worked up their way to post an exclamation mark with the long ball.
Stephanie Racine and Darcy Jones each belted homers last night as the Lady Raiders snapped a five-game losing streak with a 12-7 win over the visiting Fort Frances Juniors in the opening round of the Rainy River District Women’s Fastball League playoffs.
Courtney Easton’s bunt for a base hit to lead off the first for the sixth-seeded Lady Raiders set the table for a three-run frame.
The 11th-ranked Juniors, who had beaten the Lady Raiders 16-10 in a rain-shortened game Sunday to close out the regular season, cut the lead to 3-2 by the third.
After the Lady Raiders exploded for four runs to make it 7-2 in the fourth, the Juniors stormed back—scoring three times in the fifth to again cut the lead to two.
But the Lady Raiders landed a crushing counterpunch with five in their half of the inning.
Sydney Jones earned the win on the mound while Rylee Redford was tagged with the loss.
Couchiching now heads to Northwest Bay on Monday to play the third-ranked Beavers in a second-round match-up.
As for the Juniors, they’ll need to beat the loser of Monday’s second-round game between the fourth-seeded Red Gut Babes and fifth-ranked Fort Frances Mud Dogs next Wednesday to stay alive in the double-elimination playoffs.
The Mud Dogs used another strong pitching performance from Erika Paulsen to beat the 12th-ranked Big Island Wildcats 6-2 last night at VanJura.
Candace Handorgan took the loss.
Big Island will be the visitors again next Wednesday against the loser of the Couchiching-Northwest Bay contest.
In other action last night, the 10th-seeded Sabaskong Cougars fell 6-2 on the road to the seventh-ranked Manitou Blaze.
Karma Andy, who got the win in Monday’s all-star game, tossed the complete game to get the win over Candi Kelly.
Andy also lived up to her newly-official status as the league’s home run champ (six) by cranking her first four-bagger of the playoffs.
Summer Leonard also homered for Manitou.
The Blaze now will try to upset the second-ranked Fort Frances Her-icanes on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at VanJura.
The Cougars, meanwhile, will try to stay in the hunt with a road game next Wednesday against the loser of Monday’s match-up between the top-ranked Big Grassy Lynx and eighth-seeded Dawson Diggers.
Dawson came away with a narrow 5-4 home-field win over ninth-ranked Sabaskong Tebinaak last night.
Alicia Anderson got the win while Jarrah Tom suffered the loss.
Tebinaak next will visit either the Her-icanes or the Blaze next Wednesday.
