MOSES LAKE – The final score of Wednesday’s fastpitch softball matchup between Moses Lake and Richland doesn’t tell the full story of the game, as the Mavs nearly pulled off a come-from-behind victory after being down 11-0 at the bottom of the third inning.

Richland defeated the Mavs 11-9, remaining undefeated on the year. Moses Lake fell to 8-2.

“We definitely didn’t start the game very strong, we kind of were just not ourselves out there,” Moses Lake Head Coach Mike Hofheins said. “We spotted them (11) runs, and then we just flipped a switch and started playing. Sometimes hits are contagious, and we had some aggressive baserunning that got us sparked a little bit. Created some momentum and some excitement.”

After both squads failed to score in the first inning, the Bombers totaled eight runs in the top of the second and added three more in the third inning. An RBI triple by senior Katelyn Kriete slowed the bleeding and sent home fellow senior Jazlynn Torres for the first Moses Lake run of the day.

“They came out swinging, they put the ball in play,” Hofheins said. “We just weren’t very sharp. They had a few bloops that fell – those can be contagious too. It wasn’t like we were making a lot of errors, they found holes and they found momentum. It got contagious for them, and before we knew it, it was getting a little bit out of hand.”

Moses Lake added an additional run in the bottom of the fifth inning on an RBI by Torres that cut the Bomber lead to 11-2. The Mav bats came alive in the bottom of the sixth, first on a single by junior Kendall Reffet who scored two at-bats later off an RBI by senior Annalyse Hernandez. Junior Raegen Hofheins then cleared the bases with a double to score an additional three runs, cutting the Richland lead to five.

“Richland’s as good as a team that we’ll play all year, so to be able to play tough competition like that, it’s huge,” Hofheins said. “Iron sharpens iron. I hope it pays off when we get into the postseason. There’s a few teams in our league that are going to be a huge challenge for us, and having faced those challenging games against Othello, Mt. Spokane and Richland, we’ve been through the fire.”

An RBI by Kriete preceded a two-RBI double by junior Mikayla Schwartz, which moved the score to 11-9. Moses Lake finished the sixth inning with seven runs scored off of five hits.

Down two in the bottom of the seventh, freshman Ava Swett was walked, putting the tying run on base. However, the Mavs were unable to add on any more runs and fell 11-9.

“We crawled back, and bottom of the seventh we had a few chances with the tying run at the plate,” Hofheins said. “We didn’t finish the deal, but I’m super proud of the way we played the whole game.”

Hofheins credited sophomore pitcher Paige Richardson for stepping in to help slow down the Bomber offense near the end of the second inning.

“She found a way to keep (Richland) at bay a little bit, and gave us a chance to crawl back in it – which was nice to see,” Hofheins said.

As Moses Lake enters a stretch of league doubleheaders against Davis and Wenatchee, Hofheins said the focus is to put together a complete game over seven innings.

“We talked after the game about we’d sure like to have played for seven innings the way that we played the last three,” Hofheins said. “That’s our motivation moving forward, just putting a complete game together.”

Ian Bivona can be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.

Box Score

Bombers 0-8-3-0-0-0-0 11

Mavericks: 0-0-1-0-1-7-0 9