Tri-Center SB Wins Slugfest Over Underwood, 11-10

Tri-Center 's Natalie Ausdemore (6-28-24)

Tri-Center SB Wins Slugfest Over Underwood, 11-10 –

The Battle of Hwy 191 was a shootout in Neola Friday.

A see-saw affair saw Tri-Center come-from-behind twice and earn an 11-10 victory over Western Iowa Conference rival Underwood.

After the Eagles jumped out to a 2-0 lead, the Trojans would score 6 runs with 2 outs in the 3rd to gain the lead. But Underwood rebounded by scoring 4 runs of their own with 2 outs in the 4th to knot the game at 6-6.

That’s when Natalie Ausdemore’s 2-run homer in the 4th gave the Trojans the lead at 8-6.

“I was just looking to hit a base hit, nothing too crazy,” Ausdemore told KNOD Sports. “And when I hit it, I just felt that come off the bat and it felt really good.”

Another run in the inning would give Tri-Center a 9-6 lead after 4 innings.

But the game wasn’t over yet.

After a scoreless 5th, Underwood’s bats warmed up again. Doubles by Mary Stephens and Ruby Patomson help drive in two runs to cut their deficit to one. After Patomson was thrown out at the plate following a Alyse Petersen single, Allissa Fischer would crank a 2-run homer to give the Eagles the lead.

The Trojans would get the bases loaded with 1 out in the 6th inning when Kaitlin Kozeal would score on a throwing error to tie the game. Then a pop-up to 2nd by Caitlin Greiner would be ruled an infield fly that was dropped allowing Avilyn Kilpack to come home with the go-ahead run.

Greiner would get help from her defense in the 7th with a 3rd to 1st double play before a fly out to center to end the game.

Ausdemore knows a come-from-behind win like this against a rival can go a long way to helping her team believe in themselves.

“Sometimes we always get down on ourselves and we just can't get back up and that really helped us boost our confidence and get back ahead.”

But she also knows they have a lot of areas that need improvement.

“It really helps us boost our confidence, but we always have things we need to work on. You know these next practices will really help us work on things that we made errors out in there.”

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