With the Liberty game cancelled because of weather this week and an open weekend on the schedule, the Virginia Tech softball team held an intersquad scrimmage today at Tech Softball Park. The game was held to honor Keara Napoli, the Hokie lone senior who has indicated she will not be returning next season. Before the game starter, Coach Pete D’Amour presented Keara with a framed jersey and spoke to the crowd about Keara being ultimate team player since coming to Virginia Tech after spending the 2019 season at Georgia.

"After the cancelled game last week, we felt like it was important to honor Keara, our one “senior” who has let us know for sure she’s moving on after this year,” said D’Amour. “Today was really her day. Keara is an exceptional young lady and will be successful in whatever she decides to pursue the rest of her life. She wants the ball in every practice,” said D’Amour. “Because she knows she makes our team better.”

For the scrimmage, the coaches divided the team into two squads, the Orange and the Maroon. The Orange team won the 7 innings contest 13-6, led by Kelsey Bennett who went 4 for 4 with two homeruns, a double, and a single and drove in 6 runs.

Kelsey Brown and Cameron Fagan continued to dominate at the top of the batting order, going a combined 5 for 7 and scoring 4 runs between them for the Orange team. Jayme Bailey, Maddy Rountree, and Mackenzie Lawter each had two hits, including a solo HR by Ritter.

For the Maroon Team, a dropped fly ball kept an inning alive for them and Cana Davis took advantage by blasting a two run bomb, followed by a solo shot by Meredith Slaw.

In the circle, Keely Rochard only pitched one inning – but it was a 1-2-3 affair, and Ivy Rosenberry threw 4 solid innings, giving up only 2 hits and one earned run. Mackenzie Osborne and Kaylee Hewitt were the unfortunate victims of the Orange hitting explosion.

After the scrimmage, Coach D’Amour was pleased with what he saw from the Hokie bats. “I’m glad some of our fans got to see what our offense is capable of. Both teams swung the bats extremely well. I’ve said all year that this is one of the most potent offenses I’ve ever been around. Today showed that I’m not totally nuts when I speak so highly of our offense.”

Speaking of offense, there was some extra batting practice today as a reward for some players.
“We scrimmage a lot,” said D’Amour. “I don’t think there’s a substitute for live hitting but sometimes it can get monotonous and we can tend to take at bats ‘off.’ So we have a handful of things that we prioritize in scrimmages offensively. A home run for example is worth two points. A walk is worth one point and so on. We also have chances to have points taken away. Those are somewhat effort based. Not running hard out of the box, dropping balls on defense and so forth. At the end of a scrimmage, hitters that accumulate a certain number of points earn rounds of batting practice and the rest of the team shags. It’s a good incentive for the hitters to play pitch to pitch and stay mentally locked in the whole scrimmage.”

Freshman Emma Ritter took full advantage of the extra hitting, blast homeruns on 4 consecutive pitches and hitting 5 HRs in 6 total pitches. It certainly looked to my untrained eye that the Hokies may be getting back to the well oiled machine that we saw early in the year.

I think we’re in a good spot right now,” said D’Amour, “If we play in postseason like we have the last two practices, we’ll be in every game we play the remainder of the year. That’s all we can ask for at this point in the season.”

Let's Go Hokies!!!


[Post edited by VTChip at 05/08/2021 9:02PM]