In the end, ninth-ranked West Marshall completed the season sweep of East Marshall with a 9-3 victory, thanks in large part to a six-run explosion in the second inning for the Trojans.

West Marshall senior Kallie Malloy — the winning pitcher for the Trojans — said her team did a great job supporting her efforts on the mound.

“We hit tonight very well, we all played together as a team,” Malloy said after the six-run victory. “Really we just needed to get the bats going tonight and we did that so I am very proud of the team for that.”

Malloy went all seven innings for West Marshall, giving up only three runs off seven and striking out six batters while only walking one. With the victory, West Marshall moves to 10-1 in conference play and 26-3 as a whole on the season.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE • West Marshall senior pitcher Kallie Malloy delivers to the plate during the third inning of Monday’s NICL West Division softball game against East Marshall in State Center. Malloy struck out six and walked one in helping the Trojans prevail 9-3.

Trojans coach Todd Verwers said when his top pitcher is on like she was Monday, his team has a great chance of winning.

“If Kallie is on and we are feeling clean it is usually a pretty good night for us because we will scratch some runs across somehow someway,” Verwers said. “Lately we have been playing some really clean defense, and even if we do have a snafu they usually don’t snowball. We can usually stop that with a strikeout or a nice play by somebody in the infield.”

West Marshall’s defense did have a great game, supporting Malloy with multiple routine ground balls throughout the evening.

Before going up with that second-inning uprising, the Trojans were actually down 2-1 heading into the bottom of the second. Verwers said his team has a tendency to start slowly at times, but they did well to break that tendency against the Mustangs.

“That first time through, if the tone isnt set for us from those first three batters we tend to start a little slow, but the second time after we see some pitches we tend to get after it, maybe bunt a little bit to get everything moving around,” Verwers said. “I think we did just a little bit of that and had a couple hits that got us going. We try to be as aggressive as we can on the bases and we had a couple opportunities to do that a couple times and that really got us going.”

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE • East Marshall second baseman Rylee Freese, right, records the force-out of West Marshall courtesy runner Grace de Neui (15) during the sixth inning of Monday’s NICL West Division showdown in State Center.

The Trojans sent 12 batters to the plate in the second inning alone, with the first six of them reaching base to chase East Marshall starting pitcher Rylee Freese from the circle. Walks to Grace Porter and Malloy were followed by consecutive run-scoring singles for Kayla Cripps and Kylie Cripps, and walks to Brooke Snider and Katie Price brought coach Hoskey from the dugout.

Maria Rasmusson struck out the first batter she faced, but back-to-back hits by Renae Schaper and Karisa Blocker made it a 6-2 game. A bases-loaded walk to Malloy brought home the final run of the decisive inning.

Outside of that second frame, East Marshall (13-15, 6-5) played the division-leading Trojans extremely tightly, only giving up three runs the rest of the way.

Mustangs coach Jary Hoskey said his girls were able to put the ball in play against one of the better pitchers in the NICL West Division, an impressive feat considering they were down a few starters.

“The younger kids have really started to come around. We had some hard-hit balls tonight off of one of the better pitchers around and we moved the ball,” Hoskey said after the loss. “We scored some runs and had and opportunity to score more. Not too many strikeouts either, which I was very pleased with. We sure up our defense and get some people healthy we should be tough by the end of this season.”

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

Freese, a freshman, started on the mound for East Marshall in the game but after giving up four walks and two hits in the second she was replaced by Rasmusson, who was quite effective in four innings of relief.

Rasmusson didn’t allow an earned run while in the circle for the Mustangs, as she allowed seven hits while striking out three batters and walking only one Trojan.

This was the second win of the cross-county rival for West Marshall, something that Verwers said he doesn’t take for granted given the toughness of the NICL West.

“I’ll tell you what, with the top four or five teams in this conference there are no nights off,” Verwers said. “You have to play everybody twice and to beat those top teams once you are fortunate so to get two, that is just a feather in your cap.

“They are well coached and they are a little bit banged up tonight. Jary runs a good program and you know they are going to show up and play. It is one of those things where we are fortunate enough to get two this year against them. We will take it, because we might lose two to them next year.”

On to BCLUW

The Trojans don’t get much time to relish their win over East Marshall, as they have an important game against Class 2A No. 13 BCLUW looming on Wednesday that is essentially for the NICL West crown.

Verwers said, while they are of course preparing to play a tough game against the Comets, he doesn’t put a lot of pressure on his girls to go out and win a conference title.

“No matter where I have been I have always downplayed the conference race,” he said. “It is important to us but you cant make that your priority when you are looking at the postseason. We are looking at it as another tough test for us heading into the tournament, our schedule has toughness build right into it. This is another tough game and another opportunity for a win and we will see what happens.”

That game between West Marshall and BCLUW is set to start at 7:45 p.m. on Wednesday in State Center.