photo by: Photo by Cody Nespor

Linsly's Haley Heitz lays out to make a catch behind second base during Wednesday's game against Martins Ferry.

WHEELING — The Purple Riders had their work cut out for them Wednesday. Not only were they taking on one of the hottest softball teams in the valley — Linsly, winner of six in a row — they were doing so with eight days’ worth of rust built up.

Martins Ferry, however, was able to shake off that rust and get their bats going late to snap Linsly’s winning streak and go home with a 5-0 victory.

“They’re a good team and they were a hot team,” said MF coach Jerry Magistro. “My concern coming in was that we were off eight straight days. We’ve only played four (games) and that was a concern, you’re going to be a little rusty when you’ve been off that amount of time. You could tell early on that we were a little rusty.”

By the third inning, however, Magistro thought his team had shaken the rust off and was starting to really drive the ball off the bat. That was nor more apparent than when Kaylynn Zinn led off the top of the third inning with a home run that cleared the left-field fence and put the Purple Riders up 1-0.

The one area where Martins Ferry (5-0) showed no rust was in the circle, where starter Lauren McFarland held the opposition scoreless for five full innings. All the while, the Cadets (6-5) had their chances to tie the game but were never able to break through.

“It’s a mental approach at the plate,” explained Linsly coach Paul Recrosio. “We had a lot of balls early on that just were not well-hit balls…When we swing, it’s got to be an aggressive swing at a pitch we’re looking to hit.”

Linsly stranded four runners on base between the second and fourth innings, all of whom were in scoring position. It was in those moments when McFarland looked her best. With runners on, she ended the second inning with a strikeout, the third with a popup and a weak grounder to second and the fourth with back-to-back punchouts.

“That’s who Lauren is,” Magistro said. “There were times when they could’ve scored some runs and she shut them down. A big, big reason why we won was her pitching.”

“Until you’ve got two strikes, you don’t have to swing,” Rescrosio said. “When you’re attacking strikes early in the count, you’re looking to do damage. We’ve got to do a better job of finding our pitch early and doing damage with it.”

Eve Agnew stroked a single into center to drive in a run in the top of the sixth for a 2-0 lead and back-to-back doubles by McFarland and Neveah Hall in the seventh plated three more to give Martins Ferry a 5-0 advantage.

Kelsie Gillespie pitched two clean innings to close the game out, allowing just a single in the bottom of the seventh. The Cadets finished with just three hits and left five total runners on base.

“We didn’t make the adjustments,” Recrosio said. “We played good defense for almost seven innings but not quite long enough. That’s a great hitting team, they’ve got a lot of bats in their lineup and it’s hard to keep them quiet for seven innings.”

Starter Baleigh Burwell logged five strikeouts and five walks in the seven-inning loss.

McFarland struck out four batters in five innings for MF while walking two and Gillespie had one punchout.

McFarland finished with two RBI while Hall, Agnew and Zinn all had one. Danielle Lude reached base four times with a double and three walks and Taylor Bell reached three times with a single and two walks.

“It was an all-around win, all the way through the batting order including defense and pitching,” Magistro said. “I like that because a lot of times, we’ve got to hit a lot and score a lot of runs. It was nice to see that we’ve got good pitching and nice defense to go with the hitting.”

For Linsly, Grace Landini had a double and single and Brooke Edge had the only other base knock, a single in the bottom of the third.

Martins Ferry will be back home to host Harrison Central this afternoon while Linsly will hit the road to play away games at Bellaire Friday and at Beallsville on Saturday.

Martins Ferry 5, Linsly 0

MF — L. McFarland wp (4K, 2BB), Gillespie (6) (1K, 0BB) and Lude. Lude D; L. McFarland D, 2rbi; Hall D, rbi; Agnew S, rbi; Zinn HR, rbi.

LINSLY — Burwell lp (5K, 5BB) and Cook. Landini S, D.

MF 0-0-1 0-0-1 3 — 5 7 0

Lin 0-0-0 0-0-0 0 — 0 3 1