It was late in the day, the bottom of the fifth inning of game two of a doubleheader.
Standing alongside the third baseline Margo Jonker repeatedly yelled ‘come on, we need this run, let’s go.”
The veteran Central Michigan University softball coach must have said it three or four times in a row before Sydney Heath took the words to heart and drove a liner down the right field line to plate two runs and push CMU’s lead to 8-4.
With Heath’s hit Jonker could finally breathe a little easier because her team had to scratch and claw and knock down and drag out anything and everything it could over the course of the first 11 innings Tuesday before exploding for seven runs in the final three frames en route to a split with visiting Western Michigan.