Bishop Garrigan avenged a 10-8 loss on June 5 at Buffalo Center with a 13-6 Top of Iowa Conference softball win over North Iowa in Algona on Monday, June 26 behind another strong pitching performance from Amanda Miller.
Miller tossed all seven innings in the chalked circle to earn her 10th victory of the season. She allowed six runs, five of them earned, on nine hits while striking out seven and once again did not issue a base-on-balls.
The home scored two runs in the top of the first inning as Alisa Altman reached on an error and Gigi Byrkeland drew a walk. Alisa came around to score on an infield groundout by Jenna Boelter and Byrkeland crossed the plate when Aubree Altman reached on an error for an early 2-0 advantage.
North Iowa responded with two runs in the top of the second to tie the contest at 2-2 before the black-and-gold pushed across three runs in the bottom of the third inning for a 5-2 lead.
With one out, Maddie Meister singled and Byrkeland reached base on another Bison error. After Boelter was hit-by-a-pitch to load the bases, Aubree Altman coaxed a walk to score one run and Whitney Hovey’s single plated two more tallies.
The visitors cut the lead to 5-3 in the top of the fifth inning but Bishop Garrigan answered with six big runs in the bottom of the frame. Megan Brown, Alisa Altman and Hovey each had a hit in the big inning as the Golden Bears made the blue-and-white pay for three errors in the frame.
North Iowa scored single runs in both the sixth and seventh innings as the home team scored twice in the bottom of the sixth on a hit by Aubree Altman, another error by the Bison and a trio of passed balls in the inning.
For more on this story, please see the June 29 issue of Kossuth County Advance.