STARKVILLE — Talons outfielder Sierra Sacco was busy keeping up with statistics during her team’s series win against the Bolts in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League on Sunday.
The former Bulldog was in charge of a whiteboard that tallied several metrics, and not just hits and runs. She tracked inning wins, leadoff hitters on, shutout innings, consecutive shutout innings and so on for what head coach Howard Dobson called a system of “checks and balances.”
Sacco and former MSU-teammate-turned-Talons-ace Raelin Chaffin helped add to the tallies over the course of the series as the Talons swept the Bolts and solidified their place at the top of the standings alongside the Bandits.
“I know nowadays they have no clue what a checkbook is,” Dobson said, “but we talk about it all the time, that you’re going to have a play sometimes where you make an error, but if you can come back and do something for your team, hit behind a runner, move it up, you can have a squeeze, or score a run, or hit a bomb to make up for what happened. Then your checkbook’s balanced by the end of the day.”
The Talons tallied four runs in the closing stages of both Sunday and Monday wins, with Sacco recording two RBI on a double to add to the lead in an 8-6 win. The game was her third in a row with at least one hit, with 14 hits and 7 RBI in 11 starts this season.
The Volts made a late push, but Chaffin’s three shutout innings proved the difference as the Talons held on.
“Sometimes things won’t go your way,” Dobson continued. “The bounces don’t go, sometimes you make an error, sometimes you just don’t get lucky. But then, if you can answer back now, all of a sudden, you’re bounced back out, so it’s nice to see it today. We weren’t great offensively and throughout the whole game until they’re at the end, but we got ourselves in it, and we stayed in it. Our pitching performance was phenomenal.”
Chaffin picked up two wins in the series for the Talons, improving her record to 4-1 on the season through seven appearances. She tossed four innings on Thursday with three strikeouts and just one earned run, and followed that up with another solid outing with five innings, another three strikeouts and two earned runs to complete the four-game series sweep.
The Talons have two weeks off before returning to action July 7 against the Blaze in Rosemont, Ill. The final month of action will conclude with the AUSL ending its inaugural season in Tuscaloosa, Ala., at Rhoads Stadium. The Talons, currently tied for first place with the Bandits, are in a good position to make an appearance.
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