Crusaders handle Central Lee Monday

WEST POINT — This time, Holy Trinity’s softball team kept the lead against Central Lee and in the process recorded an elusive win.
The Crusaders scored three runs in the first inning to ignite a 7-1 win in Monday’s Southeast Iowa Super Conference South Division game at South Park.
Holy Trinity (19-5 overall, 6-4 division) defeated the Hawks (13-16, 7-4) for the first time since the program was restarted in 2020, snapping a 12-game losing streak in the series.
“It's a big win for our program,” Holy Trinity coach Loren Menke said. “Central Lee's kind of the standard right now in the Super Conference South. They've won it the last, what, three or four years in row, and they’re the leader right now. So, I mean, that's huge for us to be able to beat that team.”
The South Division race comes down to this last week of the regular season. Mediapolis is done with divisional play and leads with an 8-4 mark. Central Lee can grab a share of the title with a win on Tuesday night at Van Buren County. Holy Trinity can also get a share of the title with wins in home games against Danville on Wednesday and West Burlington-Notre Dame on Thursday.
It was back on May 21 when Holy Trinity scored three runs on Sydney Jarvis’ home run in the top of the first inning, but ended up losing 8-3.
In this game, Cadyn Holmes hit a two-run home run to cap a three-run bottom of the first, and the Crusaders kept adding on, scoring a run in the fourth inning, two in the fifth and one in the sixth.
“It almost felt like deja vu — home run to take the lead,” Menke said. “ And then the message this time was just, OK, we're not going out there and doing like we did last time. We were all up and we just let ourselves down in that game. Not tonight.”

“We missed our spot and they get a home run and score three runs like the last time, but that didn’t bother me,” Central Lee coach Jason Hawk said. “But we had base runners here or there all night and didn’t score.”
The Hawks left nine baserunners in the game, but the most frustrating inning for the Hawks came in the sixth, when they loaded the bases with nobody out and couldn’t score when Jarvis, the winning pitcher, got out of the inning by getting two popups and a force play at the plate.
“Sydney pitched a good game, and a tip of my hat to her for that,” Hawk said. “She kept us off balance all night, and there's nothing you can do about that. Sometimes a pitcher has your number that night, and she had our number tonight.”
Central Lee’s lone run came when Kenna Sandoval scored on a wild pitch to cut Holy Trinity’s lead to 3-1.
Jarvis allowed five hits while striking out seven.
Holy Trinity had 11 hits. Holmes finished the game with three runs batted in. Alivia Holmes, Kenna Gittings and Morgan Krogmeier each had two hits.
“And really, I thought we could have scored more runs,” Menke said. “The last three or four innings we had runners on. It felt like every inning, we were hoping to score.”
Menke smiled.
“But we'll take the win anyway,” he said.