Cape Girardeau — The Saxony Lutheran Softball team went 0-2 at the Notre Dame Softball fest on September 4 and 5, bringing their record as of September 8th to 3-2.
The Crusaders began their season with a pair of wins in a home double header against Twin Rivers, winning by scores of 7-5 and 5-2.
Standouts in game one include Emma Leible, who went 3 for 3 at the plate, and Madilynn Hager, who pitched the full seven innings, striking out five. Mabrie Barke also earned a complete game win, striking out four in the 5-2 game two win. Kinley Faulkenberry went 3 for 4 at the plate, and stole two bases.
The Crusaders followed the double header victory with a win in their first road game of the season, traveling to Festus to dominate St. Pius X by a score of 12-0. Madilynn Hager had a dominant performance in the circle, pitching three scoreless innings and striking out seven. Natalie Brown pitched the final two innings to complete the shutout, striking out two.
At the plate, the offense scored 12 runs on 13 hits, including multiple RBI games from Brown, Adrionna Boland and Kinsley Marsh.
“We’ve got a tough tournament coming up, but the first three games of the season were big to get off to a good start as far as wins go,” head coach Mark Lewis said Thursday, before the start of the weekend tournament. “There’s still a lot of work to do as far as who’s playing where and what we’re doing, but it’s a good start. I’m happy with how we’ve thrown so far. If we can just kind of keep it healthy. We have three, we have four sophomore pitchers right now. So we’re able to kind of mix and match the way we want to.”
In the tournament at Notre Dame, the Crusaders lost both their games on Thursday.
In game one, against Kelly, the Crusaders scored six runs on nine hits, with multiple RBI games from Faulkenberry and Halle Christisen, but lost on a walk-off in the seventh inning.
In game two, against Chaffee, Saxony fell behind early after a 5-run first inning, but managed to put up 3 runs, eventually losing 10-3. Brown went 2-2 at the plate, scoring 2 of the 3 Crusader runs on 2 hits. Christisen went 1-3, scoring the third run in the loss.
The Crusaders will play a pair of home games this week on back to back days, with a chance to avenge their loss to Chaffee, who they will host Thursday afternoon.
