Despite the chilly weather and some less-than-ideal field conditions, the Marshalltown Community College softball team still got a doubleheader in against Iowa Community College Athletic Association Division I foe Iowa Western.

On paper, the NJCAA No. 18 Reivers seemed to handle the Tigers, winning the first game 6-1 and the second 13-5 in five innings, but both games were significantly closer than they appeared.

In game one, MCC (10-11, 1-3) and Iowa Western (32-6, 3-1) were both scoreless heading into the sixth inning, and even going to the seventh the Reivers only had 2-1 lead before scoring four in the final frame.

It was a similar situation in game two, as both offenses had found a rhythm and the Tigers only trailed 7-5 heading to the fifth inning, but then Iowa Western scored six in the fifth while holding Marshalltown scoreless to win on the run rule.

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON • Marshalltown Community College catcher Saydee Tyrell attempts to catch a popup in foul territory during the second game of a doubleheader against No. 18 Iowa Western at home on Saturday.

Reivers head coach Ben Greer said it definitely wasn’t an easy task walking out of Marshalltown with two ICCAC wins on Saturday.

“We are going nothing-nothing in the sixth and I’m sitting here thinking ‘we are supposed to be one of the best offenses in the country and we are getting stuffed,” Greer said of how Marshalltown handled the 10th-best scoring offense in the country. “I thought it was two hard-fought games and to say that it was a five-inning game in the second, it didn’t feel like a five-inning game. We were in a fight the whole time so hats off to them, they played really well and it was a slugfest in the second game but we never felt comfortable.”

Tigers head coach Garland Shirley said though his team didn’t come away with a victory, he didn’t think it was a bad effort at all against the highly-touted Reivers.

“That was one of the things we talked about, the score for the second game was nowhere near the competitive level of that game,” he said. “There were a couple of plays in the corners that were some easy fly balls that we just didn’t make because of positioning or not calling someone off or something like that.”

As Shirley alluded to, it was a rash of ill-timed mistakes that did the Tigers in during both games.

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON

In the first, MCC was able to manage five hits and another four walks, giving them plenty of opportunities for scoring chances, but Shirley said they just weren’t able to drive the runners in.

“All game long we had them on the fence because we had runners in scoring position over and over and over and over again but didn’t push them across,” he said. “That was a game we let slip away, we talked about stepping up in big situations.”

Specifically in the fifth inning the Tigers had a chance to plate a few with two runners in scoring position and only one out, but two strikeouts ended that chance. The Reivers took advantage with the leadoff runner reaching on an error and Tyla Lee stepping up to the plate to blast a two-run homer, her first of two dingers in the final two innings.

Game two started emphatically for MCC, as Katelyn Cantu hit a two-run home run while batting third in the first inning, driving in Kylie Swan as well, then Shaena Robinson in the cleanup spot followed with a solo homer.

While the offense started to heat up, the defense cooled off a bit, however, as the Tigers had four errors in the game, a few of which were two-out errors that could have minimized the Reiver damage.

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON

“We had a chance to get off on easy pop ups that either we didn’t communicate on or didn’t make the right turn on,” Shirley said. “Easy things, coaches will tell you over and over again that if you give someone a second chance it usually doesn’t turn out too good. That’s kind of what happened in those situations.”

Cantu went 2-for-3 with the two-run home run in the second game, and she got the start on the mound in game one, going all seven innings and giving up nine hits and five earned runs. Cantu also went 1-for-2 with a walk in game one, which prompted Shirley to move her into the third spot for game two instead of her usual eighth spot in the lineup.

“She’s dynamic, she does the job on the mound and if you look at her batting average she does her job at the plate too,” Shirley said. “It was nice having her in the eight spot because that provided a lot of power at the end of the lineup, but we were struggling in the top half so to have her bat up top and Shaena right there too, obviously back-to-back home runs is always nice but more importantly having that threat there.”

Through all of the errors and missed opportunities, it was still a tight set of contests against arguably the best team in the ICCAC, so Shirley still said he likes where the team is at right now.

“I love the makeup of our team, we’ve got some good young players and some veteran players that have really come together. We will work through some of those things and continue to get better,” Shirley said. “It’d be a totally different story if we came out and every pitch we threw they hit over the fence and every ball we tried to field we booted, but that wasn’t what happened so I don’t feel too bad.”

T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON

The Tigers will return to action on Tuesday when they travel to Boone for a doubleheader against DMACC, starting at 1 p.m.

At Marshalltown

Game One

Iowa Western CC 6, Marshalltown CC 1

IA Western 000 002 4 — 6 9 1

MCC 000 001 0 — 1 5 2

Zoe Hicks and Keelee Huff; Kately Cantu and Kaylee Hanks. WP–Hicks. LP–Cantu. 2B–MCC: Saydee Terrell. 3B–MCC: Terrell. HR–IW: Celia Valencia (1), Tyla Lee 2 (10). LOB–IW 5, MCC 8.

Game Two

Iowa Western CC 13,

Marshalltown CC 5, 5 innings

IA Western 103 36 — 13 15 1

MCC 300 20 — 5 6 4

Brieanna Brock and Allison O’Driscoll; Taylor Tague and Saydee Terrell. WP–Brock. LP–Tague. 2B: IW–Hicks, Lee, Lily Gregory, Michal Bilger. HR: IW–Gregory (2); MCC–Cantu (1), Robinson (12), Terrell (2). LOB–IW 8, MCC 4.

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