Coyotes drop second straight to Merced Bears
Tyler Takeda/The Madera Tribune
Madera’s Kailea Ricks arrives at second base with a stand-up, two-out double to drive in Madera’s lone run in a 2-1 loss to the Merced Bears on Friday.
MERCED — For the second straight season, the Madera Coyotes softball team couldn’t find the right buttons to push in a match-up with the Merced Bears.
The Bears only had three hits in Friday’s game against the Coyotes and made all three of them count in Merced.
The Coyotes battled through adjustments and pushed over a run in the fifth inning, but couldn’t do enough to beat the Bears.
Madera’s Alexis Galvan suffered the loss in the circle. She allowed two runs and three hits over the seven innings. She walked two and struck out eight.
However, Merced’s pitcher stranded five Coyotes while striking out six and not walking a batter.
The Bears pushed over a run in the first inning. With one out, Merced laced a single up the middle and stole second. Galvan got a popout, but the Bears’ clean-up batter doubled over the head of left fielder Sadie Gonzalez to drive in the first run of the game.
Meanwhile, the Coyotes’ offense had trouble getting started. Five of the first seven Coyotes struck out. Nevaeh Galvan got the first hit with a two-out single in the second.
However, Madera couldn’t get anything going until the fourth inning. Gonzalez led off with a bunt single. However, after a popout, Gonzalez advanced to second on a Brianah Hamilton groundout, but was left stranded on a groundout by after a nine-pith at-bat.
Merced added to its lead in the fourth inning with a one-out home run over the left field fence by its clean-up batter for a 2-0 lead.
Galvan seemed to settle down from there and got a pair of fly outs and struck out the side in the fifth.
Madera added a run in the fifth inning to cut the lead in half. With one out, Kaylynn Powell singled up the middle. Galvan sacrificed pinch-runner Meah Avila to second.
Jocelyn Mendez was hit by a pitch. Kailea Ricks laced a double to the left-centerfield fence for her first hit of the season to drive in Avila and move pinch-runner Leilani Moreno to third.
However, the next batter struck out to end the inning.
Madera threatened in the sixth. Erika Perez reached on an infield single. Hamilton sacrificed her to second and Perez advanced to third on another groundout. However, the next batter popped out to end the inning.
Galvan got out of a bases loaded jam that was created by three walks to keep the Merced lead at one. She walked the lead-off batter and the No. 3 batter after a flyout. She battled tough and made good pitches to strike out the Merced clean-up batter.
The next batter was intentionally walked and Galvan struck out the next batter.
However, Madera went down in order in the seventh for the 2-1 loss.
