A day after opening the second half of their inaugural season with a 9-1, run-rule loss to the Talons, the Blaze were mired in a slugfest against the Bandits in Rosemont, Illinois, trying desperately to hang onto a lead they had held since the first inning.
The Bandits’ offense was relentless, but the Blaze never took their foot off the gas after an early offensive outburst, white-knuckling their way to a 12-10 victory on Tuesday.
“Nobody is seeing what our players are doing every day,” Blaze Head Coach Alisa Goler said. “The emotional toll, the physical toll that it takes on them, we don’t have huge rosters. We have injury issues. I love seeing that for all of our players because they are deserving of having that kind of game. I really appreciate that they’re choosing to dig in and keep competing with what we’ve had, because we haven’t had it easy.”
The injury bug has bitten the Blaze (3-12) more than any other team in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, particularly the pitching staff. Carley Hoover and catcher Taylor Edwards are still out after sustaining injuries in the first half, and leading hitter Baylee Klingler did not return until Wednesday after missing four games with a head injury. The Blaze had two reserve pool players in their lineup Tuesday, including rookie starting pitcher Aliyah Binford.
Binford enjoyed an excellent college career as a two-way player at Baylor and Ole Miss. She thought her playing days were over after leading the Rebels to their first-ever Women’s College World Series appearance this spring. She was on vacation with some of her Ole Miss teammates when she got a call from the Blaze offering her a roster spot, and she battled a steady rain in her 1 ⅔ innings in the circle.
The Blaze’s bats — which had been held to two hits the night before — had no such trouble with the elements. Every starter hit safely, led by Aubrey Leach, who went 4-for-5 with two doubles. Ali Newland, making her Blaze debut, started a five-run rally in the second inning with a leadoff double. The Blaze rattled off six straight hits later in the inning to jump out to a 7-1 lead.
“This team is fun,” Leach said. “It’s fun to be able to show up every day and just be ourselves. We meshed really early on, and this group just goes out, we’re our true, authentic selves, and that leads to people’s success. Today, I don’t get extra at-bats without the people in front of me and behind me hitting.”
Morgan Zerkle, Sydney McKinney and Erin Coffel each had at least three hits for the Bandits, who would not go away quietly. Zerkle’s two-run double cut the Blaze’s lead to one in the third against Aleshia Ocasio, but rookie Emma Lemley entered the circle in the fourth and kept the dynamic Bandits’ offense in check.
Lemley allowed just one run over three innings, accounting for five of the six strikeouts from Blaze pitchers.
“She did a really good job of not only hitting her spots, but changing things up,” Leach said. “She moved the ball everywhere today, kept them on their toes, kept them off balance.”
The Blaze added two big insurance runs in the late innings on Anissa Urtez’s RBI double in the sixth and Korbe Otis’ solo home run in the seventh. It was the second long ball of the year for the rookie out of Florida, who raised her OPS to 1.079.
Alana Vawter walked the tightrope in the bottom of the seventh, allowing a run on Zerkle’s RBI infield single and then loading the bases with just one out. But she retired the dangerous Coffel on a pop-up to shortstop, then got Bubba Nickles-Camarena to fly out to center field to end the game.
“That’s a huge win for us, not just the end result, but battling back and then holding on,” Leach said. “We’re sticking to us (and) our process. The Bandits are good, and they’re going to push through all seven innings, and we knew that. (It was a) full team effort, full staff effort.”
Harding’s game-tying blast not enough in Wednesday’s loss
Newland had another strong day at the plate with a solo home run and an RBI double, and Kalei Harding hit a game-tying two-run shot in the seventh — her first hit of the season. But the Bandits pulled out Wednesday’s game in extra innings, with Delanie Wisz hitting a walk-off single in the eighth to hand the Blaze a 5-4 defeat.
The Blaze jumped out in front early on Newland’s second-inning blast to right-center, her first of the year. In the fourth, Newland gave the Blaze the lead again with a double into the right-center gap against Lexi Kilfoyl.
“(Kilfoyl’s) stuff is so good and she tries to make you chase off the plate, so anything elevated over the plate is definitely what you’re hunting,” Newland said in an in-game interview. “We did a great job preparing. Our staff did such a good job, so I felt really confident going into today.”
The Bandits took their first lead of the day in the bottom of the fourth on Bella Dayton’s two-run double against Binford, then added another run in the fifth when Coffel hit a solo homer. But with a runner at first and one out in the seventh, Harding put a great swing on the first pitch she saw from Kilfoyl and launched it over the wall in left.
Lemley escaped a jam in the bottom of the seventh, but after the Blaze failed to score in their half of the eighth, Wisz’s hit brought home Nickles-Camarena with the winning run.
The Blaze head to Seattle next for a three-game series against the Volts starting Friday night at Husky Softball Stadium.
“Moving forward, it’s all hands on deck offensively and pitching-wise for us,” Goler said. “That’s just the hand we’ve been dealt at the moment, and they’re leaning into it.”
Benjamin Rosenberg is the Blaze beat reporter for the AUSL this season. He has more than seven years of experience covering college, professional and high school softball, and graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 2021.
