For six of the seven innings played on Friday, the Bethel softball team battled Waynesville pitch-for-pitch in their non-conference game held at Bethel High School. The Bees’ freshman starting pitcher Jessica Gilbride was on target and keeping the Bees in the game.

It was only one inning that saw the Bees fall apart, allowing nine runs in the sixth frame allowing Waynesville to defeat the Bees 13-3 in a score that didn’t indicate the true closeness of the game.

“That is how the season has gone for us, we will play great for seven innings except for one inning, where we have a massive meltdown,” said Bethel coach Jeremy Reittinger. “It comes back to bite us in a lot of games. As a team we played pretty well, we didn’t have any major errors.”

“Jessica is a freshman and she pitched a pretty good game, something to build off of.”

Bethel scored first in the opening inning, as Maddie Inman walked with one out and Kaitlyn Parker hit one out to right field which was errored allowing Inman to score, giving the Bees a quick 1-0 lead.

Gilbride got through the first two innings well, but allowed the Spartans to tie the game in the third. A bunt single to lead off by Haley Schrock eventually came around to score when Skylar Stiles drove a single through the infield to tie the game at one.

Waynesville came back in the fourth with a leadoff double from Madisyn Wamsley and single by Mariah Shaffer, but Gilbride then retired the next two batters on a popup to the catcher and a line drive back to Gilbride, but a big double from Schrock knocked in the second run of the game for Waynesville.

The Spartans opened the game in the sixth sending 15 batters to the plate and scoring nine runs to open the game up. Big hits in the inning came from Schrock, Emily Wells, Allison Savage and Ashton Rice gave the Spartans an 11-1 lead heading to the bottom of the sixth.

Bethel fought back in the sixth by loading the bases on hits from Inman and Becky Schwieterman, and Parker reached on an error. Reittinger drove in a run with a force out, but the next two batters struck out to end the threat.

Waynesville scored two more in the seventh, and the Bees added one more in their final at-bat when Grace Anthony and Inman singled, and a ground out from Schwieterman wrapped up the scoring for the Bees.

Bethel is in the middle of a busy week. They traveled to West Liberty Salem on Monday for a tournament game, then was scheduled at least three more games including senior night tomorrow night.

*Bethel Baseball- Bethel shutout Mississinawa Valley 5-0 in a conference baseball game last week, behind a one-hitter from Tyler Brookhart. He struck out 13 batters in his complete game victory, as the Bees got to 10-9 on the season.

Riley Shaffer was 2-3 with three RBIs in the win, while Hunter Shelley also added a pair of hits, and Christian White had a double.