NORTH MANKATO — It was a special edition of the annual Mankato West Softball Invitational on Saturday at Caswell Park as the Scarlets won two of three games to give coach Don Krusemark his 500th career victory.
West (6-1) opened up with a 10-7 win over Apple Valley before dropping a 12-10 decision to Rockford. In its final game, the Scarlets overcame a 5-0, first-inning deficit to upend Edina 11-9 for Krusemark’s milestone win.
“It’s a lot of years of having really great players,” Krusemark said. “I’ve been blessed with tremendous talent coming up through the ranks year after year, and this year’s no different. We’ve had smart players who are hard workers and can play the game. It’s hard not to get good numbers when you stick around that long and have such good players.
“We didn’t come ready to play in that first inning and that’s on me. Edina is a well-rounded and well-coached team, and to come back against them showed tremendous character on our part.”
Trailing 5-0 against the Hornets, West took advantage of six errors to score 11 runs in four innings to gain an 11-7 advantage.
Sophomore catcher Lydia Banse sliced an RBI double into the left-field corner to ignite things. Senior third baseman Torii Emery and junior DH Bryn Hacker added RBI singles in the bottom of the second before Emery and freshman first baseman Maleah Grunst ripped run-scoring singles an inning later.
After Edina took a 7-6 lead in the top of the fourth, the Scarlets erupted for five runs in the bottom of the frame. Senior center fielder Madelyn Bode and Banse singled to get things going before Hacker capped things with a two-run blast over the left-field fence.
Banse, Emery and Hacker led an eight-hit attack with two hits apiece while senior right-hander Brooklyn Geerdes gutted things out to clinch the victory.
“I thought we had good timely hitting today,” Hacker said. “We were able to score some runs when we needed to. My home run got us two runs, and helped us get back in the game.
“I am really happy for coach because he’s put in a lot of work for us. We’ve had some good wins this year so we just need to keep getting those timely hits.”
After giving up a pair of runs in the seventh, Geerdes buckled down to get the final out with runners on first and third base.
“Our offense finally got going and that will give us confidence going into another tough week,” Geerdes said. “That last game was crazy after getting down 5-0. We really pushed hard to catch up and prove we’re capable of coming back from that.
“I’ve been here for a while so to see (Krusemark) hit this milestone is really big because he cares for each one of us and puts in a lot of time. … For him to hit 500 is insane.”
Geerdes and Maria Hagen laced three hits apiece in the win over Apple Valley, while Banse homered and doubled. Grunst chipped in a pair of hits in each of the first two games.
Banse blasted a grand slam in the loss to Rockford. Freshman shortstop Lilly Considine banged out a trio of hits while four players — Hagen, Geerdes, Jillian Olsen and Grunst — collected two.
“Overall, I think it was a good day in winning two out of three, and Kruse getting a huge milestone was exciting,” Bode said. “We battled and learned there’s a lot of things we need to work on to get better.”
West plays Monday at Rochester Century.