Softball: One run enough as L-P’s Chloe Mitchell outduels Ottawa’s McKenzie Oslanzi

OTTAWA — While there were some hard-hit balls and scoring opportunities on both sides, an old-fashioned pitchers’ duel broke out Monday as visiting La Salle-Peru and host Ottawa met at the King Field softball diamond for the first of their two Interstate Eight Conference contests this spring.

The winner of the duel? The La Salle-Peru Cavaliers and right-handed pitcher Chloe Mitchell.

Mitchell tossed a shutout on five hits, no walks and 10 strikeouts, good enough to edge Pirates ace McKenzie Oslanzi’s seven innings of one-run, five-hit, no-walk, six-strikeout work as L-P scored a 1-0 win.

The teams are scheduled to meet again May 2 in Peru.

“Both teams played well, and the pitching was very, very, very good,” Cavaliers coach Randy Huebbe said. “Oslanzi, she’s the real deal, and people don’t know about Chloe, but Chloe’s pretty darn good. ...

“I think both teams are better hitters than we saw today, and I think you’ll see that as the season goes on.”

The Cavaliers (7-0 overall, 3-0 in the I-8) managed the game’s only run in an unusual way – which seemed like the only way either offense was going to be able to do damage.

L-P’s Evin Becker struck out swinging on an Oslanzi pitch in the dirt with one out in the top of the second inning, but the ball skidded to the backstop and Becker reached on the dropped-third strike. She took second on another wild pitch and eventually came in to score on sophomore Ava Lambert’s sharp two-out single up the middle.

Oslanzi stranded seven other L-P runners, including two on third base – Maddy Pangrcic in the fourth and Izzy Pohar (running for Paige Kirkman) in the sixth.

“It was two good pitchers, and L-P’s a good team, so I wasn’t really surprised [it ended up 1-0],” Oslanzi said. “I’m happy with how we kept them down to one run. I can’t wait to play them again.”

Ottawa, for its part, left five on base. That included Hailey Larsen – the day’s most potent hitter — two times after her second-inning triple, fifth-inning single and seventh-inning double. In the fifth, Larsen was erased on the defensive play of the game, Mitchell’s diving catch of a Grace Carroll bunt, the pitcher getting to her knees and throwing to first to double off the stunned Larsen.

“I didn’t know [if I could catch the bunt in the air]. It was just kind of instinct,” Mitchell said. “I was in the moment and just kind of went for it ... and my teammates were yelling at me to throw to first. That’s how I realized.”

Ottawa turned a nifty double play of its own in the fourth. Second baseman Molly Buscher tagged La Salle-Peru baserunner Ava Lannen – who’d reached on a high-bouncing Baltimore chop single to Buscher – running to second, held onto the ball through the contact and fired to Zoe Harris at first for the 4-3 twin killing to defuse a Cavaliers scoring threat.

But the one run the Pirates (4-4 overall, 2-1 in the I-8) did allow proved to be enough.

“You can’t ask for much better than a 1-0 game with a runner on second in the bottom of the seventh. It was an incredible game, back and forth the whole way,” Ottawa coach Adam Lewis said.

“I thought we played really well, and I thought L-P played really well. A couple base-running snafus and a couple missed bunt opportunities for us or we could have had the game tied up there. ...

“I don’t know if there’s a team I’ve ever seen that’s had a rougher 10 days or so than our kids have had – a lot of kids dealing with a lot of things that are more important than softball. I thought it was awesome the way they came out, tried to put all that stuff aside and just play hard and have fun.”