By PAUL WILCOXEN

paul.wilcoxen@register-news.com

MT. VERNON — The Mt. Vernon Lady Rams finished 2-0 in the Jefferson County Invitational after defeating Waltonville (5-1) in the opener before besting DuQuoin by a score of 4-2 Monday night in the high school softball opener for the Lady Rams.

In the opener against the Spartans, Mt. Vernon's Alisha Capps came within three outs of pitching a perfect game.

The sophomore struck out 12 batters and walked none, while surrendering only one hit and allowing a run to score for Waltonville on a sacrifice fly by Alisha McGovern.

"I told the girls that anytime you get a win you've got to feel good," said Lady Rams' coach Steve Morris. "We've got a lot of things to work on, but I'm not disappointed in their effort. We played hard. We put out a great effort. We came within three outs of a perfect game."

Breaking up the quest for perfection was the Lady Spartan's lead off hitter, Kaylee Blankenship, who singled between the shortstop and third baseman to break up the streak of 18 consecutive hitters retired by Capps.

"They out-played us," said Waltonville coach Marvin Elliston. "They out-pitched us. They out-hit us. We played pretty good defense. It wasn't the defense that killed us. We made one mistake at second base with our second baseman not being aggressive enough fielding a ball on the fly. When she got the ball she let it bounce and she didn't throw the ball hard enough to first. She just lobbed it over there and you've got to throw it harder than that. That was a mistake that prolonged the inning. When you can't make the routine plays, you give a good team like Mt. Vernon momentum."

The Lady Rams were shut out through four innings, but in the fifth they broke through for all five of their runs.

Having collected three hits the first four innings, Mt. Vernon picked up an additional five in the fifth.

Kenzi Tate led off the inning with a double into center field. Breanna McMillian hit an infield single to advance Tate to third, followed by a single up the middle from Annie Schaubert to drive in the Rams' first run.

After a fly out for the second out of the inning and a walk to Kylie Kaskie to load the bases, pinch hitter Ashton Adcock cleared the bases with a double over the center fielder's head to put the Lady Rams ahead, 4-0 at that point.

Mt. Vernon tacked on a fifth run when Tosha Ellis singled into right field to score Adcock from second.

"Today's the first day we've seen live pitching," said Morris. "We've been hitting off the machine. Obviously their timing was off. I thought it was just a matter of time before we'd string something together. I certainly didn't think we'd get shut out."

Coach Morris was concerned about the number of times his team struck out without pulling the bat off their shoulders.

"The most disappointing thing for me was, I don't know how many called strike threes we had, there was five or six, and that's just unacceptable," he noted. "We've got to swing the bat with two strikes. We've got to expand the strike zone a little bit and we'll get better at that."

Capps struck out the side in the top of the first and fanned two out of the three batters she faced through three.

She did strike out at least one batter per inning through seven complete.

"Considering that's the first live hitters she's faced, I thought she was a little bit above average, for her," said Morris. "I don't want to say she was outstanding, even though she was.

"She had some control issues — even though she didn't walk anybody — with getting her breaking pitches over. I'm sure she'd tell you the same thing. I'd give her an A for effort, no doubt. It was an outstanding effort."

The Lady Rams collected eight hits from eight different batters, while Adcock led with three RBIs in the game.

"We had too many walks and gave their better hitters too many opportunities," said coach Elliston as his pitcher allowed six free passes in the game. "When their three, four, five hitters come up more times than they should, it's going to hurt you. We're not strong enough, yet, to cope with that."