SOFTBALL: Morrow's blast propels PCHS past Johnston City

Brooklyn Morrow delivered a three-run blast in the bottom of the first inning that carried the Lady Panthers to their 5-1 home victory over Johnston City on Wednesday afternoon in Pinckneyville.

Morrow also got the win in the pitching circle, going five innings and allowing one earned run on four hits with four strikeouts. Mariah Clark finished up the last two frames, allowing one hit and two walks with a pair of strikeouts.

"That's a really good offensive team," PCHS head coach Alan Engelhardt said of the Lady Indians, "they've scored a bunch of runs this year. I thought that our pitchers were pretty darn good. For the most part, defensively, we did a pretty good job of making plays behind them. When you pitch and don't give up a lot of extra stuff on errors you're going to have a good day."

After Kylee Kling walked and Maddie Jones singled to start the bottom of the first for Pinckneyville, Morrow crushed her tenth home run of the season over the back fence at Greg Hale Field. Later in the inning, Kearsten Opp reached on an error and later scored on an RBI ground-out by Caitie Opp.

Pinckneyville would scatter their remaining three hits, picking up their fifth run when Andrea Morgan walked and scored on an error in the fourth to put the Lady Panthers up 5-0.

"They threw somebody who couldn't break glass against us," Engelhardt said, "and so you know she's going to throw away, you've got to be disciplined enough to make that adjustment and go with the thing. You can not consistently pull, pull, pull, and get yourself out."

Jaden Smith led off the fifth inning with a solo homer to bring the Lady Indians a run closer, but Morrow, and later Clark, would strand the last six Johnston City base runners to keep PCHS out in front.

Kling (1-2, R, BB), Jones (1-3, R), Morrow (1-3, R, 3 RBI, HR, BB), Caitie Opp (1-3, RBI, 2B), Emma Banach (1-3) and Josie Gleason (1-2, SAC) had hits for Pinckneyville.

The Lady Panthers (17-6, 5-3) are at Nashville on Friday.