Mount Si’s softball team got its first game in in over a week last Monday, April 5, but a big inning and a strong Bellevue pitcher combined to doom them in their league opener.

The Wolverines used a six-run fifth inning to break open a close game and hand the Wildcats an 8-0 loss at Bellevue High School. Freshman Lauren Smith went 2-3 with a double to lead the Mount Si attack, which was stymied a bit by the excellent pitching of Bellevue pitcher Emily Fleischman, who struck out 10 Wildcat hitters.

Bellevue’s six-run outburst in the fifth was helped by four Mount Si errors; those miscues, plus one in the bottom of the first when the Wolverines scored the other two runs, helped to make all eight runs unearned, which meant pitcher Alex Johnson’s overall stats were not hurt significantly by this outing. She gave up just four hits and struck out two.

The Wildcats with the loss dropped their third in a row; the team dropped a pair of nonleague games at the end of March and had not played since their game at the UW March 27, a 3-2 loss to Centralia. Mount Si had games scheduled March 29 and April 2, and last Tuesday, April 6, but all three of those games were postponed due to rain.

Maura Murphy and Brielle Buhner each had a double, and Carly Weidenbach added a single to round out the Mount Si attack.