Catawba Ridge softball leans on pitching to blank Midland Valley in playoffs

Catawba Ridge senior Chloe Burger had a stellar outing Thursday night.

The USC Upstate softball commit pitched a complete game in the Copperheads 5-0 win over Midland Valley, striking out 14 and allowing only two hits.

Burger also hit four batters within the first three innings in the win.

“I would say I played OK,” Burger said. “It wasn’t my best performance but got us a win, so it will do.”

Catawba Ridge, the defending 4A state champion, relies heavily on Burger, who reached 200 strikeouts for the season.

Against Midland Valley she only allowed one baserunner over the final four innings of the game.

“I knew I had to get out of the innings,” Burger said. “I just thought to myself, I need to get out of it and just got off the mound really hard and tried my best not to hit them.”

Catawba Ridge’s (23-2) defense is one of the best in the state, allowing fewer than two runs per game this season.

Thursday night’s win was the team’s sixth-consecutive shutout victory.

Catawba Ridge head coach Michael Kidd said coming into the season that he expected Burger to take a major step forward. He’s been largely satisfied with what he’s seen on the mound from his No. 1 pitcher, especially in the postseason.

“She threw well,” Kidd said. “Obviously, she wasn’t at her best, but she threw well enough to hold them down. Fourteen (strikeouts) is a lot, but we still had a lot of pitches get away from her that we weren’t expecting. But she’s turning it on in the playoffs like she always does, so to see 14 (strikeouts) on the board, that doesn’t surprise me.”

Burger also reached 950 career strikeouts in the win.

More about the game

Catawba Ridge started the game rolling offensively, scoring three runs in the first inning thanks to a sacrifice fly by first base Kendra Murray and a two-run double by catcher Mia Kovacs.

After that, the offense recorded only seven hits and two runs for the rest of the game.

“We’ve done enough scouting, watched enough videos that we knew (Midland Valley’s starting pitcher Karley Bedenbaugh) was throwing in or throwing up, and we just weren’t aggressive on those first-pitch strikes like we should have been and how we were in the first inning,” Kidd said. “A couple of (our players) made some adjustments, hit some balls hard to get us a few late runs on the board that we needed badly going into that seventh inning.”

The Copperheads’ fourth run came on a bizarre play from Aloni Hogan.

Hogan hit a slow roller to third base and beat out the throw at first. Instead of stopping there, Hogan saw no one was covering second and sprinted to second as the return throw to Bedenbaugh was made. Bedenbaugh’s throw to second sailed into the outfield and Hogan rounded third and slid in home for an inside-the-park home run on an infield hit.

“I saw it develop,” Kidd said. “It’s something we practice, something we work on, something we’ve been doing for years. If they’re going to vacate second base and give it to us, we’re going to take it. It just created a couple of bad throws for them that resulted in a scored run. Just being aggressive on the base paths, that’s what we do and it results in runs a lot of the time.”

Catawba Ridge’s final run came on an RBI triple by left fielder Braylon Lawrence.

Catawba Ridge remains in the winners’ bracket and will face Airport in its next game. With rain in the forecast for the scheduled date of May 4, it has yet to be determined whether the game will be moved to Friday or pushed back to Monday.