Miners sweep Northstars in doubleheader

HURLEY - The Gogebic Miners swept a pair of good games from Hurley Tuesday with a 7-5 nine-inning victory in Game 1 and a 5-4 victory in the second contest.

"Hurley is always a tough opponent, so going into our doubleheader against Lake Linden on Friday, this was an important win for us," Gogebic coach Kassi Huotari said. "Lake Linden is the top of our conference, so we'd like to go there and take those wins, too."

The Northstars have some big games coming up as well. They hope to get revenge on Northern Lights Conference leader Mellen in a Thursday road game, they go to Drummond Monday and the WIAA postseason starts Thursday, May 16.

"These kids are pretty resilient, so we'll learn from this and put it behind us because we have some big conference games and the postseason coming up soon," Hurley coach Randy King said. "Those were two real close games that just didn't go our way."

The Miners took a 5-3 lead in the seventh inning of Game 1 when two runs scored on a bunt by Emily Delfavero only for the Northstars to tie it with two of their own in the bottom half on a misplayed fly ball.

Gogebic scored two in the ninth to get the win. Kenly Anderson doubled to lead off the inning and another runner reached on a Hurley error. Brooke Stanislawski and Emma Choronzy both drove in runs with base hits to put the Miners in front for good.

Brooke Stanislawski and Keira Graham both had two hits for the Miners. Stanislawki tripled and scored in the sixth inning. Kaedyn Hendrickson and Greta Steiger also did well at the plate, Huotari said. Audrey Stone came into the game in the seventh, reached on a base hit and came around to score.

"I was really impressed with our upperclassmen this game," Huotari said. "They were able to hit off of Olivia DiGiorgio well."

Olivia Peterson pitched the final seven innings, got the win and struck out six. Madison Luzinski started and had one strikeout in two innings.

DiGiorgio took the loss. She struck out seven but allowed 10 hits and a walk. Kamryn Swartz finished with two of Hurley's six hits.

The Northstars scored two runs in the seventh inning of Game 2, but their comeback effort came up a run short.

Luzinski got the win with a complete-game effort in the Game 2. She struck out four.

"I was proud of the way she came out and pitched strong after being pulled the first game," Huotari said. "They snuck in some good hits off of Madison to score four runs, but we were able to get some good hits from the meat of our batting order to come out on top.

"I was very happy with the way the girls stayed tough. Even with a few errors, we did not unravel and did not have any significantly bad innings, which is usually what does us in - one bad inning."

Swartz and Patience Sivula each had two hits for Hurley. Sivula, Alayna King and Andi Krall each drove in a run.

Ariel Haasch took the loss. She struck out two and gave up eight hits and two walks.

"Olivia and Ariel pitched well in both games and both defenses played pretty good," King said. "They hit in the gaps a little more than we did today and that was the difference, gotta give them credit."

Gogebic improved to 7-5 and Hurley fell to 8-9.