Pat Harty

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Ayana Lindsey showed both her power and her patience as a hitter on Saturday and the City High softball team needed both to escape Davenport West’s upset bid.

Lindsey walked with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning to lift City High to a 5-4 victory in a Class 5A regional semifinal at City High.

The talented sophomore also smacked a solo home run in the second inning and went the distance on the mound, allowing just four hits.

Lindsey admitted after the game that she felt a little pressure after the underdog Falcons had tied the score at 3-3 in the fifth inning and at 4-4 in the seventh.

“A little bit, but I knew I could do it,” Lindsey said. “I just had to work a little harder on the mound.”

Class 5A sixth-ranked City High improved to 33-7 on the season and will face No. 11 Dubuque Hempstead (32-7) at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at City High in the Region 5 title game with a trip to the state tournament on the line.

Hempstead advanced by defeating Linn-Mar 6-0 on Saturday.

The Little Hawks defeated Hempstead 2-1 in nine innings during the regular season.

“We gave them an unearned run halfway through the game, but that’s going to be two very good teams,” City High coach Jeff Koenig said of Tuesday’s matchup. “They’re a state qualifier from a year ago. They’re going to throw a pitcher that’s going to throw us off the corner of the plate a little bit and try to keep us away from our power alleys. And we’ll have to really continue to work our balls away and when they do come back in, we’ll have to be ready to light some things up.”

City High scored three runs against Davenport West in the bottom of the second inning, which started with a single by shortstop Brooke Bormann. She advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by Alexa Fredericks and then scored on freshman Makayla Ribble’s two-run home run.

Lindsey then made it 3-0 with her solo blast that cleared the centerfield fence.

She then raced around the bases in a full sprint and has been doing that since the beginning of the season whenever she hits a home.

Lindsey credits Bormann for encouraging her to run the bases hard after hitting a home run.

“We have this motto hard sixty for our last sixty meters or sixty feet or whatever,” Lindsey said. “Brooke told me to run as fast as I can around there.”

Junior second baseman Keli Potter belted a solo home run with two outs to give City High a 4-3 lead.

However, the Falcons answered with a run in the seventh to force the game into extra innings.

Davenport West took advantage of some defensive lapses by City High in the fifth inning that resulted in three unearned runs.

The Little Hawks committed two of their three errors in the fifth inning when they appeared to have some communication breakdowns.

“We didn’t do a good job,” Koenig said. “Tomorrow, we’ve got practice and we’ll work on that. Crowd noise a little because we were saying, hey, we’re having trouble communicating a little bit, so we’ve just got to do a little bit better job.

“And even on my part, I’ve got to be up and I’ve got to be screaming. It just seemed like we were off a little bit when it came to that. Yeah, communication was a big thing tonight and they talked about it when I went out for the (post-game) huddle. They just talked about, hey, we’re struggling on communication and we’ve got to figure our communication out.”

Lindsey’s home run was her 17th this season, which leads her team.

But unlike a lot of power hitters, Lindsey is also very patient and selective at the plate, as she showed by working for the game-winning walk.

“I think if you look we’ve probably got three or four hitters that are okay to hit with full counts or they’re okay to say, you know what, I’ll just continue to work the count until I find the exact pitch I want to hit,” Koenig said. “I’m not going to hit her pitch when I’m in control.”

The Little Hawks are now just one victory from making back-to-back trips to the state tournament.

City High advanced to the state tournament last season for the first time in 17 years by defeating Linn-Mar 4-2 in a regional final.

That game was also played at City High, and Koenig hopes to have the same support on Tuesday that was present a year ago.

“It’s huge. It’s huge,” Koenig said of playing Tuesday’s game at home. “If you remember last year when we played Linn-Mar, this entire grass was completely full.

“So that’s going to be a big thing. We’ll get on social media and we’ll get some messages going out and some e-mails saying, hey, help us pack this place in red so that we can out pressure on them from the field, from the stands and everywhere in between.”

Davenport West  000  030  10  –  4  4  2

City High                030  010  01  –  5  7  3

W – Ayana Lindsey                           L – Kaylie Caldwell   

2B – DW: Emma Lee 

HR – ICH: Makayla Ribble, Ayana Lindsey, Keli Potter

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