Lady Hornets defeated by Lady Thunderbirds in extra innings

The initial burst by the Wautoma Lady Hornets offense had the making of a “W”, however, the host Iola Lady Thunderbirds clawed their way back to a 7-6 victory in 9 innings on May 16. Wautoma ignited for a 5-0 lead in the first inning as Ava Stahl led off with walk, Brianna Buechner single, Sydney “RBI Machine” Dunn 2-run double, Ava Butt single, Bryn Gunderson RBI sac bunt, two-out - Liv Cieslik hit (SB), Braelynn Pica 2-RBI single and Lyv Weiss single. The Lady Thunderbirds rallied back with a run each in the first, second and third inning to cut the Lady Hornet lead to 5-3. Iola would add one more run in the fifth inning making it a 5-4 game. The Hornets would leave a village on the base paths as they stranded bases loaded in the fifth and sixth inning. However, Wautoma would bring one run in the seventh inning on a Cieslik bunt single (SB) while scoring on a Weiss two-out RBI single to increase the lead to 6-4. The Thunderbird offense opened the bottom of the 7th inning with back to back hits along with an error followed with another hit to tie the game up 6-6 with no outs. Iola should have won it in regulation but a non-tag with a fly ball caught by Lyv Weiss kept the game alive as the runner tried to delay steal home and got busted by Butt and Stahl right after. Ava Butt would strike out the next batter to prevent a Thunderbird victory. The Hornets squandered an opportunity to put the pressure on Iola in the eighth inning with runners on second and third with one-out but lack of execution didn’t allow a run to score. Cieslik would re-enter in the eighth inning for pitching duties and would hold the Thunderbird team in check meanwhile the Hornet offense went down three straight hitters in the top of nine. Iola would capture the win 7-6 in the bottom of the ninth on a hit, flyout, error and then one-out single. Cieslik was dealt a tough loss going 6 1/3 innings with 2 K’s, 2 BB’s, 8 hits and 3 earned runs while Butt gave two innings of back end relief with a K, 3 hits and an earned run. Wautoma pounded out 16 hits with Butt (4x4, 2B, BB), Cieslik (3x5, 2 SB’s, 2 runs), Stahl (2x5, SB, BB, run), Weiss (2x5, RBI) leading the attack with Buechner (1x4, run), Dunn (1x4, 2 RBI’s, BB, SB), Gunderson (1x4, RBI, SB, sac), Piechowski (1x5) and Pica (1x4, 2 RBI’s) with a hit each. The Lady Hornets finished out the regular season at 13-12 with a 8-2 SCC record good enough for second place.