Ellen Cordova puts away the Lady Cavs.
The Blythewood Lady Bengals softball team (18-3, 8-1) continued their winning ways on Tuesday by completing the season sweep of Richland Northeast (0-9). Blythewood defended their home field defeating the Lady Cavaliers 8-0 off a lights-out pitching performance by Ellen Cordova backed by solid defensive play. After the game Blythewood head coach t Ware was proud of the Lady Bengals effort.
“It was a really good night for Lady Bengals softball,” Ware said. “We got tremendous pitching along with flawless defense.”
The Blythewood fielders didn’t commit a single error and Cordova only allowed one walk and gave up just one hit. Base running opportunities were limited for the Lady Cavaliers as they never even reached second base. Cordova retired 19 of the 21 hitters she faced and struck out six. Blythewood earned their eight runs off nine hits, with two runs coming in the first inning, one in the second, two in the fifth and three in the sixth. The Lady Bengals need just one more region win to clinch their eighth straight region championship and Ware knows that the win Tuesday night puts his team one step closer to that milestone.
“A region win over a region rival is always good,” Ware said. “But we still need one more to clinch the region.”
Blythewood will wrap up region play tonight (April 19) when they travel to Ridge View to take on the Lady Blazers. Earlier this week Blythewood celebrated their senior night with a home game against White Knoll. The three seniors recognized for outstanding play over the last four seasons included Cordova, Bailey Newman and Blair Murphy. During their time together that class has compiled a record of 125-42. Cordova will graduate in the top 10 in both hitting and pitching statistics all-time at Blythewood. Since starting as an eighth-grader she came into the 2013 season with a .368 batting average, 92 runs scored and 71 runs batted in. In the pitching circle Cordova has been just as impressive allowing a 2.45 earned run average in 50 games and 197 innings pitched. She came in with a 23-10 record, 102 strikeouts, 45 walks and an opponent batting average of .207. Newman has started for Ware since she was a seventh-grader and has been an all-state player the last several seasons with a career batting average of .341, 98 runs scored and 82 runs batted in. Murphy has played for Ware since she was a freshman and has started the last three seasons as the Lady Bengals second baseman. With so many accomplishments from his senior class Ware knows it won’t be the same without them.
“We’re going to miss our seniors a lot next year,” Ware said.
