Garden City sweeps Northwest Tech

By Mike Pilosof

Photo by Adam Shrimplin

Goodland, KS-Brittany Dowell continued her big day.

The freshman went 3-for-4 at the plate and knocked in two runs, Ariel Denney fanned five in the circle, and Garden City completed a two-game sweep of Northwest Kansas Tech 6-4 Wednesday afternoon.

The Broncbusters got off to another fast start. Madison Biller and Denny led off the game with singles, and Kaylee Rogers added a knock to load the bases. With one out, Dowell smoked a two-run single to center. Audrey Graf followed with an RBI base hit, and Garden City was up 3-0.

The score stayed that way until the fourth, when the Mavericks got even. Northwest Kansas Tech scored three runs on two singles, the last of which came off the bat of Kimberlee Kunshick that tied the game at 3.

Garden City grabbed the lead back in the fifth on RBI singles by Vivian Lopez and Madison Brasher. After the Mavericks got a run back in the home half, and with the tying run at third, Denney struck out Leesa Horton with some high heat. Then in the sixth, Garden City added some insurance when Gaby Hernandez smashed an RBI double to the gap to make it 6-4.

In the Mavericks' sixth, Denney worked around a leadoff error by getting Sirena Rosalez to bounce into a double play. After a single, Denney made a tremendous pitch to get Paige Knezevich to pop out to end the inning. In the seventh, the sophomore pitcher got Northwest Kansas Tech to go in order.

Denney threw 113 pitches, giving up just one earned run on nine hits while striking out five. She improved to 5-4 in the circle.

The losing pitcher was Veronica Benetez, who allowed six runs on 17 hits.