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Pautzke powers CHS past rival St. Mary’s

Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s catcher Kya Krzmarzick tags out New Ulm Cathedral’s Heidi Hoffman (17) Tuesday at Harman Park in New Ulm.

NEW ULM — With a fairly young team this year, it took a while for the New Ulm Cathedral softball team to get comfortable playing together at the varsity level.

But after a big weekend this past Saturday that included a championship at the Windom tournament, the Greyhounds seem to be doing just fine.

Cathedral avenged an early-season loss to rival Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s, defeating the Knights 6-0 at Harman Park on Tuesday. Both teams now have one conference loss with less than two weeks to go in the regular season.

Senior pitcher Josie Pautzke provided the veteran leadership, pitching a complete-game shutout. She allowed three hits and she struck out five. But her biggest impact on the game came in the thrid inning when she drilled a grand slam to center field to break the game open, giving her team a 5-0 lead at that point.

“You come into this game, and you know it’s a big game,” Pautzke said. “We got into the circle the first inning and I told them it’s just a game. Do what you can do and play how we can play, and I think we did that. After that grand slam, everyone just kind of lightened up a little bit and they loosened up as well.”

The Greyhounds, who had a pair of come-from-behind wins at Windom on Saturday, are starting to settle in and the offense is coming around.

“It was huge, we had three really close games where we had to jump out and hit the ball right away, it was really good for us to have to play up to our competition,” Cathedral coach Jamie Portner said.

Leah Weiss went the distance for the Knights and took the loss. She allowed six runs and six hits.

After a couple of scoreless innings, the Greyhounds got things going in the bottom of the third. Emily Schommer delivered an RBI single with the bases loaded for the game’s first run, scoring eighth-grader Megan Haala. Pautzke followed with a grand slam to make it 5-0 and it gave Pautzke and company some breathing room.

The Greyhounds added to the lead in the sixth. Lily Franta had an RBI single that scored Shay Ubl.

The Greyhounds host Sleepy Eye on Thursday in a doubleheader and St. Mary’s hosts Minnesota Valley Lutheran on Thursday in a doubleheader.

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