Chippewa Falls handles River Falls in softball regionals

Division 1 softball regionals kicked off Monday. In Sectional 1, No. 4 Chippewa Falls and No. 13 River Falls bumped up their opening round matchup from Tuesday to avoid the potential inclement weather. Chippewa Falls — one of the perennial contenders in Division 1 — used some early runs and a strong performance from starter Violet McIlquham to oust River Falls from the tournament by a score of 9-1.

The Cardinals (22-5) wasted little time against River Falls (8-17) starter Audra Adermann, with the top three of the Chippewa Falls order in Makeena Johnston, Olivia Sanborn and Paige Steinmetz all reaching base before an out had been recorded.

Catcher Lauren Shepherd drove in the first run of the game on a fielder’s choice and the Cardinals got tricky on the bases for their second run. Shepherd faked a steal attempt for second, baiting Wildcats catcher Jordan Torrez to fire the ball across the diamond. That allowed Sanborn to scamper home, easily plating the second run, while Shepherd made it back to first.

Chippewa Falls is an active team on the bases. The Cardinals don’t hesitate to take an extra base whenever possible. Chippewa even ran the exact same play on the bases to score Sanborn again in the second inning, though River Falls was able to catch Steinmetz in a rundown and recorded the out.

“In the majority of our lineup we have pretty good speed,” Chippewa Falls co-head coach Chelsea Seckora said. “When you have pretty good speed, you can take a few more chances and make them play catch and see if you can outsmart them [while playing catch]. So I thought a couple of our runners did a nice job of that tonight to just get us the cushion runs.”

An Ali Geist sacrifice-fly on a sharp line drive to right scored the third Cardinals run of the inning and third baseman Emma McIlquaham chopped a single into right field that scored Mykle Buhrow to cap off the first frame. Chippewa Falls batted around and had seven hitters reach base safely.

After Sanborn scored and Steinmetz was tagged out, Shepherd stepped to the dish with nobody on. That didn’t stop the Cardinals backstop from driving in her second run of the day, however, as the sophomore cranked a home run to dead center field. That made it 6-0 and even though the Cardinals cooled over the next couple of innings, the damage had been done.

“We made them pay for some walks and things like that early, which is a sign of a good team,” Jared Faherty, the Cardinals other co-head coach said. “We gotta just gotta be consistent, keep working, hitting hard line drives and see what happens.”

Six runs was plenty for Cardinals starting pitcher Violet McIlquham. McIlquham — one of five pitchers Chippewa Falls utilizes — cruised through much of the game, the one blemish for the freshman coming in the third inning when River Falls strung three hits together and got its lone run on a Lily Burke single.

Trailing 8-1, the Wildcats were able to load the bases with one out against McIlquham in the sixth, but the right-hander struck out the next two batters she faced to escape the jam. McIlquham pitched through some pain after taking a line drive off the ribs in the fourth inning, but shook it off and pitched the next two innings with no issue.

Senior Lakken McEathron relieved McIlquham in the seventh, pitching a drama-free frame to send Chippewa Falls to the regional finals.

“I thought Violet did a really nice job today of keeping them off-balance,” Faherty said. “Then Lakken came in and threw real well there in that seventh inning. It was nice to see. Both of them came out and did a nice job”

The Cardinals pitching staff could give them a big edge in the postseason. Chippewa Falls uses five pitchers which keeps all of them relatively fresh and well-rested while other teams aren’t able to use as many pitchers over an entire season.

“One of the big advantages we have with having used five pitchers over the course of the year is that they’re pretty fresh,” Faherty said. “A lot of other teams have only been throwing one or two kids and they’ve thrown a lot of innings in a three or four week season, whereas our kids are only about at that 40-inning mark for the year at the most.”

Chippewa Falls won’t know its opponent for sure until Tuesday, but it will be either No. 5 seed Wisconsin Rapids Lincoln or No. 12 Wausau East who play each other Tuesday. Either way the Cardinals will host the game at 5 p.m. Thursday at Casper Park.

The Cardinals are no stranger to high postseason expectations, but aren’t putting any extra emphasis or pressure on themselves for the postseason. Instead, Chippewa Falls is approaching it like it would any other game.

“In the circle behind the dugout before every game, we said today, the information that we give you is no different than any other game on any other day,” Seckora said. “You gotta go out and play your game and focus on what we need to do. I think our mentality is the same as it always is.”