Hurricanes drop contest to The Villages 9-6

By Michael Maksymicz

INVERNESS — The Citrus High School softball team started to come alive near the end of the game, but The Villages had a stellar seventh inning to defeat the Lady Canes 9-6 in a preseason game Friday night.

The Buffalo took a 4-1 lead after the second inning; however, in the third inning, the ’Canes head coach Larry Bishop changed pitchers and brought in freshman Kayla Quesenberry.

The next four innings, Quesenberry was dead on and the Buffalo found it hard to hit her.

“I thought that we played pretty well together, but as time goes on we will get better and a lot stronger,” Quesenberry said. “Near the end of the game I was having trouble because I lost the release off one of my pitches so I went to the dugout and made corrections.”

After the sixth inning, Citrus looked like it would pull this one out. But with some errors and The Villages starting to find Quesenberry’s pitching mix, the Buffalo pulled away in the seventh by outscoring the Lady ’Canes 4-2.

“We got what we wanted because with the changes from our game this past Wednesday, we were planning to play some of the girls a couple of innings to get everyone into the game,” Bishop said. “We saw a lot of positive things from kids that we had not seen before, so we were very pleased with that.

"I was pleased the way that Quesenberry came in and handled herself only being a freshman,” Bishop continued. “She will start Monday on the varsity squad.”

Citrus starts its regular season 7:30 p.m. Monday at Nature Coast.