In the American Rivers Conference opener for both teams, Central College swept Simpson Sunday afternoon in Indianola in softball action, 6-3 and 11-0 in five innings.

The Storm jolted Dutch ace Mariah Fritz with a pair of early game one home runs by Emily Bell and Sara Trent, holding a 2-1 lead after four.  But Central strung together a four-run fifth inning, held on for the win, then exploded for 10 runs in the third inning of game two and won via the run rule.

In their first action since returning from an up-and-down 8-4 trip to Arizona, Central Coach George Wares says that he’s still not sure where his team is eventually going to be, but a sweep of their rivals was a big first step.

“If you’re going to contend and finish in the top two or three (in the league), you have to win these two.  They hit the couple home runs and had some very good at bats, but thankfully we were able to break it open in the fourth.  Once we did that, everything kind of changed as far as they were pressing a little bit and we were relaxing. And then obviously the second game we had the big inning, and once we beat their number one, I felt pretty good about scoring some runs in game two.”

The big blow in that 10-run inning was a grand slam by Central right fielder Sadie Baugher.  Shaye Witte racked up five hits on the day for the Dutch while Sara Tallman added four hits and and two walks.  Bell went 3-for-4 in game one for Simpson, while Kayla Reusche was 3-for-3 in the nightcap.

Simpson falls to 13-9 overall, while Central improves to 10-4.  You can hear more about the doubleheader when Coach Wares joins Trevor Castle tonight on the Central College Radio Coaches Corner at 7pm on 92.1 KRLS.