BLOOMFIELD HILLS STARTS FAST, SWEEPS SEAHOLM
The Bloomfield Hills Black Hawks swept a softball doubleheader from the host Birmingham Seaholm Maples 11-6 and 13-3 Monday evening in an Oakland Activities Association crossover.
Bloomfield Hills jumped out early, scoring in the first inning of each game.
In the opener, the Black Hawks plated three runs in the first inning, sparked by a tworun single from Madison Abbo to lead 3-0 early. The Maples would battle back with single runs in the third and fourth innings, before the Black Hawks broke the game open with six runs in the fifth inning as they batted around. That inning included another RBI single from Abbo, who finished the game with three hits and four RBI.
The Black Hawks also took advantage of multiple Seaholm errors in each of their big innings as the Maples committed seven errors in the first game.
“We’re a young team. At times
we’re playing eight or nine freshmen and sophomores and we’re not good enough to give up four or five outs an inning. I think when we make those kinds of errors early on and then we get behind, we’re not yet good enough to catch up,” Maples head coach Bill Scheurman said. “We started out rough and never quite got back to where we
needed to.”
Meanwhile, the steady Black Hawks just kept turning over the lineup, spreading out the offense.
“That’s what we try to do. We try to get that bottom third to turn over to the top of the order, and they did a really good job today doing that,” Black Hawks head coach Dan Whitmire said.
Besides Abbo’s big game, the Black Hawks also got a strong outing from Grace Main, who went the distance on the mound while also knocking in two runs. Sloane Freed walked four times, stole two bases, and scored two runs.
Seaholm got three hits each from Reagan Johnson and Tessa Boitos to pace their attack, but they could never catch up after falling behind early.
The Black Hawks jumped out to a big lead early in the second game as well. After getting a run in the first inning, Bloomfield Hills batted around in the second inning, again scoring six times. Main was the hitting star of the second game for the Black Hawks finishing three-for-three at the plate including leadoff triples in both the second and third innings.
Sidrah Rasheed had two RBI and three runs scored out of the leadoff spot as Bloomfield Hills raced away with the win in the second game.
Bloomfield Hills (2-9) finally gets a couple in the win column after playing a tough early schedule.
“It’s nice to get a couple. I kept telling these girls that it would pay off,” Whitmire said. “Our bats came alive today, which we’ve seen it in practice. The defense was solid — the defense has really been solid since the get go.
“We’ve got high expectations this year. Even though we’re young (only one senior), we’ve got high expectations and we’ve got a good core to do that. So,
we’ll see how it all plays out at the end of the year.”
Seaholm (7-7) faces Marian on Wednesday as they try to get back in the win column before starting divisional play next week.
“This (Bloomfield Hills) is one of the teams we could play in the districts. I think we’ve actually only had maybe three or four practices this year because of how the scheduling was. So, we’re looking forward to actually getting some practice time going over a lot of the fundamentals that we haven’t had a chance to go over yet,” Scheurman said. “So, we’ll get our chance with these guys potentially in the districts and we’ll see did we improve the way I think we can and do we get some of those early outs and stay in the game and then get excited and see what happens.”