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Knights eye tourney

Softball

By RYAN SPITZA

For The Daily News

NEGAUNEE — With the Mid-Peninsula Conference regular season and tournament wrapped up, the Norway and Negaunee High School softball teams met for a doubleheader at LaCombe Field for a pair of tune-up games before the MHSAA district tournament next week.

Negaunee prevailed in both games of the twin bill by scores of 1-0 and 7-0. Hailey Fezatt went the distance for the Miners in game one, recording seven strikeouts without allowing a walk in the complete-game shutout.

Miners head coach Randy Carlson was pleased with his team’s effort against the high-powered Norway offense.

“Norway is probably one of the best hitting teams in the U.P. and for us to shut them out two games in a row is pretty unbelievable,” Carlson said. “Hailey pitched her best game of the year, she was in control the whole game.”

While Fezatt was stellar on the mound, her pitching counterpart, Mariah Gyselinck, kept the Miners offense at bay. Gyselinck only allowed two hits through the first six innings for the Knights.

For Norway Head Coach Robert Bal, he was happy his team was able to play the two games.

“I’m glad the games happened because sometimes at the end of the season, these games don’t get to be played for one reason or another,” Bal said. “It’s nice to come up and play a quality opponent. The first game could’ve gone either way. You learn a lot more from that than you do in a blowout. That’s what I told the girls, we want to see quality competition because the bar gets raised a little bit higher the rest of the season.”

Bal also commented on his team’s performance today, noting the Knights played well defensively while the offense went stale.

“Defense has been our staple all year. We have a couple of girls that we can plug in and not skip a beat,” Bal said. “We just didn’t get any hits. We had runners stranded at second and third a few times and we didn’t score them.”

Knights’ Ada VanHolla had two hits in each game. Kayte Casanova posted two hits in the opener.

Up next for each team is the MHSAA District Tournament next week.

Norway will travel to Bark River-Harris on Tuesday to face Stephenson in District 98.

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