The Windermere softball team kept their chance to advance to the World Series championship game alive with a 9-2 win against the Central team from Anderson, Indiana. Lauren Mathis pitched six strong innings, striking out 14 and driving in two runs. Marissa Sidwell also batted in two runs and raised her team leading batting average to .667 for the series.
The Indiana team broke Mathis’ streak of scoreless innings in the top of the first. She gave up a single to leadoff batter Lauren Landis, who came around to score on an error and a groundout. Mathis steadied and struck out the next two batters to end the inning.
Windermere scored three runs in the bottom of the first against right hander Audrey Ricker. Singles by Mathis and Wheless put runners on first and second with two outs and Lexie Blair drove them in with a triple. Sidwell followed with a single, scoring Blair for the third run.
Mathis gave up singles in the second and third innings, but got out of trouble by striking out the side in the second and two out of three batters in the third. She also struck out the side in the fourth. Ricker held Windermere scoreless in the bottom of the second and was replaced by Sierra Cunningham in the top of the third in order to preserve Ricker’s eligibility to pitch tomorrow. Cunningham held Windermere scoreless in the bottom of the third, but not the fourth.
Sidwell led off with a single and moved to second on Brianne Guldin’s grounder to second. Amanda Fleming singled, moving Sidwell to third. After Sara Steinman struck out for the second out, Amanda Palencia was safe on an error by the shortstop. Sidwell scored and Fleming went to third. Pitcher Lauren Mathis came to the plate, looking to extend the Windermere lead. Cunningham threw a ball, and then got two called strikes on Mathis. On the next pitch, Mathis singled, driving in Fleming. Plasencia scored the third run and Mathis took second on a Central error. Wheless grounded out to third to end the inning.
Mathis set down Central in order in the top of the fifth with a strikeout and two pop ups. Windermere scored 3 more in their half of the fifth on a single by Sidwell sandwiched between triples from Maria Pagane and Brianne Guldin, and another single by Amanda Fleming.
Central scored once in the top of the fifth when Ricker reached on an error, stole second, moved to third on a ball, and came in to score on a passed ball. That run would be all Mathis would allow. Fittingly, she ended the game by striking out the last Central batter.
The 9-2 win keeps Windermere’s hopes alive to advance. With one game left in Pool Play, Latin America (Mexicali) has a 3-0 record. Central and Windermere are tied with 2-1 records, the EMEA team from the Netherlands is 1-2, and the Portland team is 0-4. Windermere plays the Netherlands Monday morning. Latin America and Central play Monday night. If Windermere wins tomorrow, their 3-1 record guarantees a tie for second or first place.
The top two teams advance to the semi finals on Tuesday, August 14.
If Central loses to Latin America and Windermere wins, then Windermere will be the clear second place team and will play the team that finished first in Pool B. If Windermere and Central both win, there will be three teams tied in Pool A with identical 3-1 records. In that scenario, the tie breaker is runs allowed ratio. The teams with the lowest ratio of number of runs allowed divided by innings played advance. Going into the last game, Latin America has allowed 6 runs, Windermere 9, and Central 10.
