The Fayette softball team lost its third straight game on Monday. The Lady Falcons fell to Central State 8 opponent Linn, 8-0, at home. The loss drops Fayette to 1-1 in the new conference and comes after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the New Franklin Tournament on Saturday.

The Lady Falcons have had difficulty in tournaments so far this season. They opened the season with a 1-2 performance at the Boonville Tournament and won just one of three games on Saturday at the New Franklin Tournament.

“I think it’s just the mentality of it,” said first-year Fayette coach Bri Moore.

Fayette cruised past Madison Saturday morning in the first round with a 15-3 victory to move on to the championship bracket but were denied a chance to retain the tournament title in a shutout by longtime rival Westran 5-0 in the semifinals. Fayette then fell to Jamestown 7-3 in the third-place game.

Junior Payton Kindle earned the win against Madison, allowing just three runs (2 earned) on five hits with a walk and a game-best eight strikeouts.

Fayette collected nine hits. Seniors Whitley Sunderland and Cayle John, as well as sophomore Greycen Syferd, finished with two hits apiece. Leadoff hitter Paige Vroman, sophomore Brooklynn Wies, and Syferd drove in two runs each. John and Vroman each doubled. Senior Rylee Finley finished with two runs scored, drove in one run, and stole a base.

Mistakes plagued the Falcons in the final two games of the tournament. They compiled seven errors against Westran and five against Jamestown.

Senior Skylar Sunderland took the loss against former Lewis & Clark Conference opponent Westran. She struck out a game-high 10 batters, allowing five runs (2 earned) on five hits with two walks in a complete-game outing.

Fayette outhit the Hornets 6-5 with two extra-base drives but couldn’t produce a run. Wies and Hailey Kuster each doubled. Vroman and Wies both laid down two hits.

“I think we were just kind of in our heads,” Moore said about the loss to Westran. “Just making errors that we normally don’t make and not adjusting defense or offense.”

Things didn’t get much better for Fayette amid the heat and dust in the third-place game against Jamestown. Five errors contributed to the 7-3 loss.

Jamestown scored in the top of the second inning, but Fayette tied the game with a manufactured run in the bottom of the frame.

The Eagles jumped ahead with two more runs in the third inning on a two-run homer by Olivia Meisenheimer. Back-to-back errors in the top of the fourth gave way to another run. Jamestown then strung together a double and two singles to go up 7-1.

Fayette scored one run in each of the fifth and sixth innings but couldn’t make much more of a dent in the scoring margin.

“We talk about what we can always control,” Moore said. “There’s a lot of things you can’t do in softball, but there’s a lot of things you can. It was letting those controllables not be controlled.”

Fayette finished with just two hits against solid pitching from Meisenheimer, and struck out 15 times.

Hits came from Whitley Sunderland, who beat out the throw to first on a bunt single, and Skylar Sunderland, who delivered a two-base hit in the bottom of the sixth.

Kindle took the loss in the pitching circle after allowing seven runs (2 earned) on nine hits, including two doubles and a homer. She walked one runner and retired two batters on strikes.

Between two rough tournament performances, Fayette had been perfect in five regular season games, including winning its first-ever game in the new Central State 8, 2-1 over New Bloomfield. 

A loss to Linn on Monday ruined that streak. Fayette committed five more errors and recorded just one hit against a Lady Wildcat team that finished fourth in the state in Class 2 a year ago and has already accumulated a dozen wins on the season this year.

Fayette was to face area rival New Franklin on Tuesday after the Advertiser went to press. New Franklin won the first bout of the season against Fayette 13-4 in the Boonville Tournament. The Lady Bulldogs swept their own tournament on Saturday without surrendering a run in two games.

Fayette returns to CS8 play against another area rival, Harrisburg, on Thursday. Fayette hosts its own Tournament on Saturday. The Falcons open pool play at 9 a.m. against Slater, then take on Harrisburg at 12:30 p.m.