RICHMOND — Courtney Richey has dominated opponents throughout her Humboldt career. The All-State pitcher had not lost a game outside of the state tournament since her freshman year and the Cubs had not lost a game the entire season. All that changed Thursday night when they took the field in Richmond against Wellsville.
“One bad game this time of year and you are done,” Humboldt coach Brad Piley said.
Wellsville has been Humboldt’s kryptonite across sports over the last year. They eliminated an undefeated Cub baseball team on Wednesday night in the regional final. They ended the boy’s basketball season in the playoffs earlier this year. And last season they knocked the Cubs out of the state baseball tournament.
But the Cubs softball team seemed to be immune to the Eagles. That is, until Thursday night, when they defeated Humboldt 9-0 to advance to state.
“I could tell we just weren’t as upbeat as we normally are,” Piley said.
Eagles’ ace Hannah Pemberton and Richey battled the first three innings. Both pitchers held the opposing offenses at bay in the earlier portions of the game and the game went into the fourth inning with no score.
The Eagle offense broke through with two runs in the fourth inning to give Wellsville the lead.
That was all Pemberton needed. The sophomore shutout the Cub offense by preventing the speedy Humboldt offense to stealing any bases the entire game.
“The have a good catcher (Rayne Wright),” Piley said. “She has a strong arm and we knew we couldn’t run the bases like we normally do.”
Humboldt managed only two hits off of Pemberton with Makaylah McCall and Tilar Wells each getting singles.
The Wellsville team took advantage of six errors committed by the Humboldt defense and piled up insurance runs against Richey.
“You can’t have six errors and expect to win,” Piley said.
Humboldt’s defense seemed to be affected by a muddy field in Richmond and committed several uncharacteristic mistakes.
“We played in the same conditions,” Piley said. “We just hit the ball to them. I can’t take anything away from them, they played well… A lot of the errors were because of the muddy field though.”
Wellsville scored two runs in the fifth inning and two more in the sixth before capping the game with three in the seventh and final frame.
“As hard as (Richey) throws the ball, the field is probably going to affect someone who throws it that hard more,” Piley said. “They put the ball in play and hit it hard.”
