By TYLER HENRY
Lead Sportswriter - Salina Post
The Salina South softball team flexed their muscle on Friday night, smashing four home runs to pull off the clean sweep of another AVCTL foe in Newton.
With victories of 5-4 and 10-0, the Lady Cougars improve to 10-6 on the year while the Lady Railers fall to 4-8.
South set the tone right off the bat, as shortstop Maliyah Koster led off the first with a solo shot to put the Lady Cougars up 1-0.
Newton would respond with three runs of their own in the second and another in the fifth to take a 4-2 lead into the home half of the sixth, but with their backs to the wall, South broke out the heavy artillery.
Koster led off the bottom of the sixth with a walk, and just two batters later, Macy Yost blasted a pitch over the left field fence to even the score at 4 apiece.
Not willing to leave anything to chance Paityn Fritz followed Yost with a moonshot of her own to straightaway center to give her team their first lead since the second inning and put the Railers down to their final three outs.
With one run of wiggle room, Fritz returned to the circle and thanks to a phenomenal defensive stop by Koster at short, was able to record three straight outs to lock up the game-one win 5-4.
Fritz finished her day 2-3 at the plate with a double and a home run and pitched a complete game recording six strikeouts without issuing a single walk.
The Lady Cougars threatened to break game two open early, and after leaving the bases loaded twice in two innings, made good on that threat in the third scoring a whopping eight runs that included another two-run shot from Fritz.
Newton battled but couldn’t solve the riddle of Macy Yost in the circle, who recorded a complete-game shutout allowing just two hits and two walks.
Needing just one run to ice the game, Koster once again reached base, this time with a leadoff double, and Emily Newman put the game on ice, driving a ball into the gap to score the tenth and final run of a 10-0 shutout.
All told, Koster reached base in five of her seven plate appearances, doubling twice, homering once, and coming around to score four runs in the sweep.
The Lady Cougars will travel to Maize South next Friday while the Lady Railers return to the road to face Valley Center on Tuesday.
Both games were streamed live and a link to the full broadcast can be found below.