By Sam Parsons

The Oskaloosa Indians softball team earned conference win #1 of the 2025 season last night in a matchup against the Newton Cardinals.

The Indians had been searching for a bounce-back effort following 4 straight losses to Grinnell, Bondurant-Farrar, and Dallas Center-Grimes. The found it against the Cardinals: a game of clean defense, solid pitching, and just enough offense got the job done in a 3-2 victory.

The game was largely a pitchers’ duel between Shannon Van Rheenen of Oskaloosa and Lexi Frehse and Leighleigh Hammons of Newton. Van Rheenen logged a complete game, going 7 innings in the circle and allowing 2 runs (1 earned) on 6 hits and 2 walks while recording 9 strikeouts. Frehse started the game in the circle for Newton and pitched 4+ innings, allowing 10 base hits and 3 earned runs with 1 strikeout and 0 walks. Hammons entered in the 5th inning and pitched 2 innings, allowing 0 earned runs on 2 hits with 3 strikeouts.

Most of the damage done by Osky’s lineup came in the 2nd inning. The Indians racked up 5 singles, with Ireland McGraw and Kobie Criss each driving in runs. However, the bases were left loaded when the inning ended, keeping the Cardinals in the game. The Cardinals responded in the top of the 4th when Mack Sims belted a home run over the right field fence to cut the deficit in half at 2-1.

The Indians would add a critical insurance run in the 5th, though: after Vivian Bolibaugh reached base on a single, Aracelli Pilcher drove her in with a hard-hit single that made the game 3-1 entering the 6th.

Newton, searching for a comeback effort, was able to make a bit of noise in the top of the 6th when Sloan Broderson knocked in a run with an RBI single to make it 3-2, but a groundout to end the inning left 2 runners on base, and the Cardinals would enter the 7th inning still trailing.

When the top of the 7th rolled around, Shannon Van Rheenen answered the bell for Osky.

“It was a little bit stressful,” she would go on to say after the game. “But there’s really nothing I can do [except] go as hard as I can. It’s the last inning…I just had to give it my all and hope for the best.”

She promptly retired the Cardinals 9-1-2 hitters in order with two strikeouts and a flyout, clinching the victory for the Indians.

“I told [the team] after the game, we’ll take any win we can get in the conference,” said head coach Alex DeJong in his postgame comments. “But it’s kind of, you know, it’s not a good thing but it’s a good thing that we feel like we can play a lot better, but we still got the win.”

“Defense won the game tonight,” he added. “I think Shannon pitched a great game once again. And the defense helped behind her, and that’s what we kind of preached after the last few games. We felt like we didn’t play defense great, and we weren’t doing a lot of the little things right. I thought tonight that our defense was a lot better, but hitting wise, we have a lot of work to do.”

Oskaloosa will next host Norwalk on Friday night in a doubleheader.