Sound pitching frustrates Tech hitters

The Lady Trojans are slowly emerging as a Sunset League powerhouse despite the one league loss to Cheyenne. Last Friday the girls defeated a sound Tech Roadrunner team 6-0. Tech was the number three team from the Sunrise League, who was 9-2 overall and 3-1 in League.

The Trojans pitcher, senior Whitney Roderick, frustrated Tech hitters all day long. Roderick limited the Tech offense to just two hits for the entire game and posted 8 strikeouts. This was a feat in itself since the Roadrunners scored 54 runs in their last four games.

Roderick has an arm that throws close to a 60 mile an hour fastball and usually challenges most teams she encounters. Tech was not up for the challenge.

“My arm felt well. I have been working on junk pitches a lot. My off-speed pitch is not where I want it to be. The important thing is I am working it and improving it and I am not giving up on it. I was satisfied with the strikeouts. I don’t look at the score book and say, ‘Oh I got this many strikeouts.’ It’s how my team performed. There were a lot of really good plays out there. The team stood up behind me and I am really proud of them,” Roderick said.

Roderick also performed well with the bat, hitting a lead off triple to right field in the fourth inning. During the game, Roderick went 2-3 and was on base all three at bats.

“I just went up there wanting to perform the best for my team. I wanted to show them that I had a bat,” she said.

Another hitter that has been doing well as of late is Kristal Kaiwi. Kaiwi went 2-3 against Tech, but managed to get on base all three times. She had a single and a triple for 3 RBIs.

“I am surprised I have a hot bat. I have not been hitting that good lately. I have been improving on my swing in the batting cages and working really hard to get my swing back to normal. I felt good about the triple. The Tech pitcher pitched them the way I liked them. She had a good speed. The faster pitchers are a bit easy to get a hold of,” Kaiwi commented.

Trojans Coach Eli Armendariz was happy with the win and the runs scored, but still felt his team left too many runners on base. The Trojans left six on base during the course of the game. In the fourth inning, the Trojans had bases loaded with 1 out with the top of the lineup at bat, but had two hitters fly out in a row to end a good scoring opportunity.

“We had 12 hits with six runs out of that. We really could have blown that game out if we got one or two more hits,” he said.

The Trojans are home this entire week and will play Western on Tuesday and Faith Lutheran on Thursday. Both games start at 3:30.

Armendariz feels the Trojans have a good chance of taking both games. Pahrump had beaten Faith earlier in the year 5-2 at a tournament. The Faith girls are 8-7 overall and 2-0 in league, while the Trojans are 9-5 overall and 1-1 in league.

“We should be OK with Western. We really need to concentrate on not getting sloppy against Western. We need to use that as pitching practice against Faith. I had talked to the Tech coach and he said their pitching is not good. We need to wait for the ball to reach us,” he said.