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Sports

Girls Softball Loses To Sherwood 15-4

It was the first loss of the season for the Trojans.

The Gaithersburg girls softball game lost their first game of the season Monday against Sherwood 15-4.

The game remained close for four innings with Sherwood maintaining a one-run lead. The Lady Warriors, however, broke it wide open in the fifth, scoring eight runs off of eight hits.

"We were playing pretty well up until that point and you just can't give up a big inning like that," Gaithersburg head coach Randy Berger said. "To [Sherwood's] credit, they hit the ball well, some bloop hits, some walks on our parts, some errors ... usually there's a bit of everything when you give up an inning like that."

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Errors were a big problem throughout the game for the Trojans' defense. Sherwood stole nine bases and scored two unearned runs due to wild pitches and bad throws. "We just made too many mistakes defensively," Berger said.

Gaithersburg pitcher Julie Hance threw well to start the game. She racked up five strikeouts, including the very first Sherwood batter, and kept the ball on the ground for easy outs. After the disastrous fifth inning, Hance bounced back and kept her cool in the sixth but still let by two more runs before being replaced on the mound in the seventh.

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"She didn't get a lot of support behind her," Berger pointed out. "We've got to play better defensively behind her. Julie's been outstanding already this year. ... Against Sherwood, she's not going to get 11, 12, 13 strikeouts like she does against other teams. You know they're going to put the ball in play."

"I don't think this score fairly reflects how good they are," Sherwood head coach Pat Flanagan, whose team is now 4-0 and has beaten each of its opponents by at least six runs, said. "Julie Hance is probably one of the top pitchers in the county."

Flanagan's team is full of power hitters, and she expected them to hit to Gaithersburg's outfield, which she said she sees as the Trojans' weakness. Instead, it was Gaithersburg's infield that ended up losing it for them.

The wind may have also kept batters on both teams from getting a good cut on the ball. According to the Weather Channel during the game, the temperature was 45 degrees, with an 11 to 19 miles-per-hour wind that made it feel like 39. When the ball did get in the air, the ball tended to stall and hang.

This caused some problems for both teams' outfielders, who sometimes over or underestimated the ball's trajectory.

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