Inactivity doesn’t faze Silverado in win over Rams

Silverado softball coach Kyle Crane couldn’t decide whether his team would be rested or rusty on Tuesday.

Unlike most teams in the area, the Skyhawks played only four games in March and hadn’t played since a 19-10 win over Sierra Vista on March 18.

The answer was a little bit of both, with just enough hunger mixed in.

The Skyhawks overcame 13 strikeouts and a couple of errors to pull out a 7-3 win over host Rancho in the Northeast League opener for both teams.

“We had some rust for a few moments, but we also did some really great things,” Crane said. “We got some hits against a really great pitcher who throws hard. This was a big test for us, not having a lot of early season games. We’re really happy.”

Riana Splinter showed no rust, going 3-for-4 with four RBIs. She knocked in two runs with a one-out single to right-center in the first inning and tripled home two more in the seventh to increase Silverado’s lead to 6-3.

“She threw a lot of pitches outside, and we did a nice job of just going with pitches,” Crane said.

And the entire Silverado (3-2, 1-0) team did a fantastic job grinding out at-bats.

Leadoff batter Madison Sisco saw 24 pitches in four trips to the plate, and Hanna McCall and Kaitlynn Crane each had a 10-pitch at bat in the game as the Skyhawks forced Rancho’s Aly Lamboo to throw 140 pitches.

“We had to make some adjustments,” Kyle Crane said. “In the first inning, we had trouble laying off her high pitch. We made adjustments in the box.

“Even some of the girls who didn’t have a lot of success at the plate saw enough pitches to give the on-deck hitters a chance to see a lot.”

Splinter’s two-run single and an RBI single by Brandi Splinter in the second gave the Skyhawks a 3-0 lead.

A Silverado error and Kayla Coles’ run-scoring hit in the third trimmed the lead to 3-2, and another Skyhawk error in the fourth allowed Rancho (9-9, 0-1) to tie the game. But the Skyhawks went ahead for good in the fifth when Sisco tripled and scored on a wild pitch.

Coles was 2-for-3 for the Rams.