The Portage softball team lifted the lid on the home portion of the 2013 season with a 15-5 rout of the Michigan City Wolves on Tuesday evening.
The lady-Indians improved to 2-0 overall behind a strong pitching performance by Heather Zengler in the conference opener. Zengler worked a complete game and recorded six strikeouts.
“Heather had a great outing today; she got ahead of the hitters and worked the location perfectly, which is what she wanted to do,” substitute head coach John Hall said.
Hall and fellow assistant Jay Hodges guided the Indians to the victory after head coach Lisa Hayes gave birth to a baby boy on Easter Sunday. Hall, a former longtime freshman and junior varsity baseball coach at PHS, is making a return to the Portage diamond after a one year stint as the head softball coach at South Central.
“It felt good being back here coaching again for Portage,” Hall said. “It’s a great team to coach with, and a great group of seniors. It’s great to be around this team.”
The eight seniors made their presence felt as catcher Haley Hodges lashed four hits and drove in four, finishing a home run shy of the cycle in back of Zengler, who is also a senior. Stephanie Upton went 2-for-4, while sophomore Kaitlin Doud collected three hits and scored twice.
“Offensively, we stayed aggressive tonight,” Hall said. “We switched the girls around a little bit at the plate.”
The lone hiccup in an overall strong performance was the defense as the Indians committed nine errors, igniting both of the Wolves scoring rallies as Michigan City pushed three runs across in the third inning and two more in the fifth.
“We’re just going to go back to our basics tomorrow in terms of fielding infield, we’ll work on that,” Hall said. “We just came out a little bit stiff with our approach to the ball today. It’s nothing that we’re too concerned with or too worried about, so we’ll come back tomorrow and work out the kinks and be ready to go for Thursday.”
The Indians were clinging to a 4-3 lead entering the third inning, when they broke the game open with a five run rally before tacking on three each in the fourth and fifth frames. Stephanie Upton dashed home as Dalton Minor reached on an error in the bottom of the fifth to invoke the ten run rule and end the game.
The Indians, who did not lose a single player to graduation after last season, host Crown Point on Thursday night at 4:30 in a battle of two of the conference’s top teams.
“We’re going to get our hitters ready to go,” Hall said. “We’ve got to have our “A” game on Thursday, it’s going to be a close game. If they bring (pitch) the freshman (Miranda Elish, who has already verbally committed to Oregon), they bring the freshman. She throws a lot of heat, but we’ll be ready to go.”