Blue Ponies finally get to play a real softball game

After weeks of delays and cancellations, the Havre High softball team finally got on the field Tuesday in Lewistown. Unfortunately, the start didn’t go quite as planned for the Blue Ponies.

In the debut of first-year head coach Tony Vigliotti, Havre dropped its first Central A conference game of the year to Lewistown by the score of 14-4. Havre is 0-1 on the season and will return to Lewistown Friday and Saturday for the Lewistown Invitational.

“We saw dirt for the first time,” Vigliotti said. “I saw a lot of good things. There are a lot of things we need to work on communication wise, but there are a lot of others where we need to get outside and work on some things. But I think it went pretty well for it being the first time that we saw the field.”

The Eagles didn’t have a particularly dominant inning against the Ponies, but Lewistown did score in all five of at bats, getting two runs in the bottom of the first, three in the second, two in the third, three in the fourth and four in the fifth inning to end the game at 14-4. Senior Alex Barkus was on the mound for the Ponies and was hit with the loss.

“I thought that Alex pitched well. She hit her spots,” Vigliotti said. “They hit a couple of home runs off of her but she had the next-pitch mentality and went at it again and did a good job. We need to get a little more aggressive with two strikes and things like that, but we will be fine.”

The Ponies had a tough time generating offense throughout the game but did manage to put some runs on the board in the top of the third inning. The rally started with a single by Janae Boles, who eventually scored on an RBI double by Sam Oliver. Kinzee Peterson also drove in a run with an RBI double, as did Sydney Wilting with an RBI single. Wilting also got a hit in the top of the fifth inning and was the only Havre player to record more than one hit in the loss.

After the top of the fourth, Havre trailed just 7-4, but the Eagles scored seven runs in the final two innings, while HHS scored none to end the game due to the 10-run rule.

While Vigliotti and the Ponies were hoping for a better result, the coach said the best part about the game was just getting a chance to see the players play and to figure out where improvements need to be made.

“We were excited to see grass, dry grass without any mud in it,” Vigliotti said. “So that was exciting. We are going to try to get some more experience and try to get a little better. This being our first time we got a glimpse of what some kids can do, so we will take that and go from there.”

Lewistown 14, Havre 4

Havre 004 00 - 4 5 3

Lewistown 232 34 14 13 1

WP - Irvin

LP - Alex Barkus

Lewistown - Butcher 1-4, Hays 0-3, Mangold 3-4, Koldstad 2-4, Irvin 0-4, Castillo 2-4, Weeden 2-4, Jenness 1-4, Lewist 2-2.

Havre - Janae Boles 1-3, Peyton Brown 0-3, Sam Oliver 1-3, Kinzee Peterson 1-3, Lauren Kato 0-2, Alex Barkus 0-1, Jera Verploegen 1-3, Sydney Wilting 2-2, Kylie Walker 0-2.