Wink and a knock: Raiders slap hitter drives in winning run in WCC showdown with Tigers

QUINCY -— By trade, Morgan Winking is described as a softball slapper.

The left-hander uses extraordinary bat control, and when coupled with her above-average speed, she provides the Quincy Notre Dame softball team with an effective weapon at the bottom of its order.

Winking’s talent was on display late Friday afternoon at The Backyard, where QND pushed across a late run for 3-2 win over Beardstown in a key West Central Conference contest that took only 84 minutes to complete.

Winking’s quick wrists allowed her to flip a pitch toward the left side of the infield with two outs and two on in the bottom of the sixth inning and the score knotted at 2 The junior center fielder was able to beat the throw on an extremely close play at first. As the play was unfolding, QND’s Madalyn Boyer, on second base at the time Winking made contact, took off toward third base and never stopped. Boyer scored without a play at the plate..

Moments later, Notre Dame pitcher Caitlin Bunte, after giving up a lead-off single to open the top of the seventh, struck out the next three batters.

Game. Set. Match.

“(Being able to slap) the ball can frustrate an opponent,” Winking said. “I’m not sure what it looked like, but I was definitely safe at first on that play.”

Ironically, Winking was not always a left-handed hitter, let alone an accomplished slapper.

“We turned her around from being a right-handed hitter when she was in the eighth grade,” QND coach Eric Orne said. “We like to bat her ninth in the order, right ahead of Bunte (who is Notre Dame’s top run producer and power threat in the leadoff position).”

Winking admitted her game-winning hit was not only satisfying, but helped offset her two earlier at-bats.

“I had struck out my first two times up,” Winking said. “Pitchers like to attack me inside or outside (in an effort to limit her slapping ability).”

The victory moved QND to 22-4 overall and 7-0 in the WCC. Beardstown drops to 17-9 and 7-2 in conference play. Notre Dame has two league games remaining next week — Tuesday at West Hancock and Wednesday at Camp Point Central. 

Liberty, which has finished its nine-game WCC schedule with an 8-1 record, is one of only two other schools with a mathematical chance of tying QND for the championship. Central (13-5, 5-2 WCC) is the other.

“This game with Beardstown had the feel of a tournament game, especially since they were just behind us in the standings,” Orne said.

QND jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first inning when Alyssa Ley and Morgan Zanger delivered RBI hits, but after that, the Raiders’ bats went quiet until late in the game. Beardstown tied the score in the top of the sixth with catcher Kylynn Maltby’s two-out, run-scoring triple doing the biggest damage. Maltby, the team’s clean-up hitter, is a .485 hitter with nine home runs and 44 RBIs. .

“I think we got complacent,” Orne said. “We had to have a little talk late in the game.”

Bunte gave up just four hits to Beardstown and finished with 11 strikeouts and one walk. Bunte, a southpaw whose season high is 16 whiffs, fanned at least one batter in every inning. She retired the first 11 hitters she faced and did not allow a hit until the fifth inning.