Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – With all the highlights Jess Heick experienced at home during her prep career she never imagined her senior night would be an all-time low.

That’s the possibility Heick and her fellow Solon seniors were looking at following a 17-1 loss to Western Dubuque in the opener of Monday’s WAMAC Conference doubleheader.

The Spartans weren’t about to let possibility become a reality.   

Class 3A seventh-ranked Solon bounced back from a 16-run drubbing in the opener to capture the nightcap 16-4 in four innings in a wild senior night doubleheader at Solon.  

“In my whole time at Solon that was definitely a low,” Heick said. “I think we all just kind of got ticked off and determined and played really well.”

Western Dubuque (18-11) set up a somber senior night ceremony between games with an 11-run explosion in the seventh-inning of the opener.

The Bobcats hammered 13 hits and took advantage of seven Solon errors to produce a season-high scoring output as Solon allowed more than eight runs in a game for the first time this season in the opener.

“Confidence wise it could have been a season ender the way we were finishing the first game,” Solon coach Jim White said. “Boy, if we don’t come out and play in the second game who knows so it was really important we got that one.”

Solon (25-10) didn’t just salvage a split in the second game, the Spartans sent their seniors out with an emphatic win that helped erase the sting of the lopsided opener on Monday.

Seniors accounted for seven of the Spartans’ 13 hits in the game-two win, as Solon took its turn putting up a season-high run total.

“It was a good win to come back from what happened the first game,” Solon senior McKenna Miller said. “We knew we had to do something better so we just decided to come together and do better the second game.”

Western Dubuque picked up right where it left off in the top of the first inning when freshman leadoff hitter Ella Link launched a solo home run off Miller to quickly make it 1-0 Bobcats.

Miller settled down to retire the next six batters she faced and that was enough time for the Spartans to build a lead.

Heick plated senior center fielder Bryn Hanrahan with a line drive double off the center field fence to tie the game 1-1 in the first inning.

Solon took its first lead of the evening with a three-run second inning that made it 4-1.

“I was a little bit nervous after that homerun but I just wanted to go back to hitting my spots,” Miller said. “We got some runs and that me confidence.”

Miller made it 5-1 with her own RBI double in the third and Madison Rogers followed with a towering two-run home run to left field that put Solon up 7-1.

“We needed it really badly,” Heick said. “That’s not the team we want to be and that’s not the team that we are but we’ve been trying to build off of every loss and we definitely did that tonight.”

Solon ended the game via the run rule with a nine-run fourth inning that featured a two-run double by freshman Jadyn Jeter, an RBI double by Heick and a run-scoring single by Miller.

The Spartans had seven hits in the fourth inning alone, two more than they had in all of the opener.

“Jim always tells us we are going to be our best by July 1st,” Heick said. “We just sat down between games and said let’s find our July 1st team and I think that’s what we did.”

Heick finished 3-for-4 with two doubles and two RBI and Hanrahan was 2-for-4 and scored three runs for Solon.

Miller picked up the win, allowing four runs on five hits while striking out two and walking three and also had two hits and drove in two runs.

“It was a bummer the way the first game went but we wanted to come together and get a win for the seniors in the second game,” Miller said. “Making sure we did that on senior night was a motivator for sure.”

Game 1

Western Dubuque     104  010  8  –  17 13  0   

Solon                           000  000  0  –   1   5   6

W – Lyndsi Wilgenbusch       L – Kayla West

2B – SOL: Madison Rogers. WD: Michaela Jones, Ally Besler.   

HR – WD: Lyndsi Wilgenbusch, Amy Kane

Game 2

Western Dubuque     100  3 –    4    5    4 

Solon                           133  9  –  16  13  14

W – McKenna Miller              L – Regan Massey

2B – SOL: Jess Heick (2), McKenna Miller, Jadyn Jeter

HR – SOL: Madison Rogers. WD: Ella Link