TRENTON — Evelyn Henson had a strawberry on the back of her leg from a slide earlier in the season. She made it worse Wednesday night.
“It hurts a lot,” the Edgewood junior catcher said with a laugh. “But it’s worth it.”
Henson broke things open with a two-RBI triple in the bottom of the sixth, and the Cougars had their best hitting performance of the season in an 11-6 Southwestern Buckeye League victory over the Franklin Wildcats.
Edgewood (6-12, 3-3 SWBL) snapped Franklin’s nine-game winning streak and has won four of its last six after starting off 2-10.
“We’ve been having a little bit of a rough start to this season,” Henson said. “I don’t know what it was about this game, but everybody got pumped up before the game and was ready to go.
“We all really thought we were going to be in this game. We were ready offensively and had been practicing really hard and working really hard. I think we were really prepared for this one. This is the start of a potential win streak. This is going to be the start of a really good thing.”
Henson reaggravated the shiner sliding into third with her triple, which knocked in two runs to give the Cougars an 8-3 lead in the sixth. Edgewood collected 13 total hits, scored 11 straight and held off the Wildcats’ seventh-inning surge.
“I knew they were good offensively. Their record shows,” Henson said of Franklin (12-6, 3-1 SWBL). “Even though we were winning, the runs we had still weren’t enough. We still needed to put more on the board. At that at-bat, I kind of knew something needed to happen, and I had to keep it going. That’s all that was in my head — just to keep it going and not be the last out.”
Cougars freshman Jaycie Broshear held it down in the circle, struck out six and had three 1-2-3 innings.
“I threw a lot of pitches, and we mostly threw screw, which always goes to the outside and gets right on the corner,” Broshear said. “It was working perfect today.
“This is definitely going to boost our confidence. We’re going to be more energized in the dugout, and hopefully that will get us more wins.”
Ellie Clemmons went 3 for 4 with three RBIs and two runs to lead Edgewood offensively, while Graci Halsey, Rylee Bryant and Madison Ferrell added two hits apiece.
“This will basically get our season started,” Cougars second-year coach Wayne Henson said. “We’ve had a rough go at it from the get-go. Hopefully, it propels us into the rest of this week — which I told the girls that it’s a big week for us. It’s time for them to start playing big girl ball.
“Today, prior to this game, I told them we’re not going to talk about anything leading up to this point. We’ve got to go out and do our jobs. This is a huge week. Hopefully, it propels us into being competitive for tournament time.”
Franklin moved out to a 3-0 lead in the first two innings on a couple Edgewood errors. That was all the Wildcats would get until scoring three in the top of seventh.
“We had a chance early in the game to score a couple more runs than we did,” Franklin coach Jim Miller said. “We didn’t take advantage of the middle of our order. When we don’t do that, it comes back to bite you.
“Even the last inning, we dropped a ball on a bunt at first base. After that, they score four more runs. So, we were still in the game at the end had we made that play. When you don’t make those plays, you lose.”
The Wildcats used their offensive power and stellar pitching to reel off their nine straight wins. Miller said Wednesday’s performance crept up on them.
“We’ve pitched well, and we’ve hit the ball well,” Miller said. “We’ve played solid all year long. This is kind of a bad game. Over the course of a 25, 26, 27 game season, you have bad games. You don’t want to have too many in a row, but we just had a bad game.”
Josie Whitt (2 for 4, two RBI) and Susan Gray (2 for 4, RBI) paced Franklin at the plate. The Wildcats clubbed five of their nine hits in the seventh.
“That’s more of the way we hit the ball,” Miller said. “The middle of the order had come up that last inning and hit the ball hard. That’s usually how we hit the ball. We just didn’t do it on a consistent basis.”
Edgewood travels to Harrison on Thursday, while Franklin hosts the Cougars on Friday.
