Auburn Riverside fastpitch wins nail-biter over Kentridge
Published 3:50 pm Tuesday, April 7, 2026
There haven’t been too many rough waters for Auburn Riverside’s fastpitch team this season — the Ravens have an 8-2 record and now sit one game back of Tahoma for the top spot in the NPSL.
The next test on the schedule was the Kentridge Chargers and their junior phenom Jozi Thompson. But the Ravens were able to get just enough and defeat Kentridge, 2-1, on April 6.
“These are my favorite kind of games. I like 2-1 ball, 13-10 football games,” Ravens head coach Bryce Strand said. “We’d love to hit the ball over the fence and all those things. But it’s the bunts, stolen bases and putting the ball in play and having good at-bats. We were fortunate to get one more run.”
The game blew by at just an hour and five minutes after first pitch. Both Kylee Curtis and Thompson were excellent in the circle as both starting pitchers threw complete games. Strand thought his starter threw an excellent game. She won’t beat teams with dominant velocity, but rather with precision and movement.
“Kylee is so dialed in with her pitches. We have a lot of kids that throw really, really hard in this league. Kylee throws about average, but moves the ball and locates really well. That’s the secret, she gets strikeouts in an unconventional way of just moving the ball and changing spots,” Strand said. “She’s a smart, crafty pitcher.”
Whenever a team takes on a future Division I pitcher, like Thompson, runs come at a premium. But at-bats against Thompson showed Strand that his team had potential to do enough to get some runs.
“We anticipated a game like this, maybe three times through the order at max and every at-bat makes a difference,” Strand said. “This is a game where a team that executes all the little things wins.”
Sloane Cross had the game winning RBI in the bottom of the fourth inning on a double to center field, one of her two hits in the ballgame, and as the leadoff hitter, she has improved every day as his table setter, Strand said.
“I thought this was her best hitting game against a quality pitcher,” Strand said.
Kentridge opened up the scoring in the top of the second. Rylee Souvannahvanh doubled to start the inning and later came around to score on a sacrifice fly from Claire Coffland to give Kentridge the lead.
Auburn Riverside got one run to come across in the third: Hannah Potter doubled to lead off the third inning and she would score on an error from Thompson on an infield pop-up.
After flying out with the bases loaded in the second inning, Cross came up again with a runner on third and no outs in the fourth. Cross cashed in with a double to left center field and score the final run in the 2-1 win for Auburn Riverside. Cross went to old tape to see how Thompson would approach her from a pitching standard. “I went back and watched myself bat (against Thompson). It helped me so I could watch her wind up and get the timing down,” Cross said.
Auburn Riverside takes on Auburn on April 7 before hitting the East Coast and playing in a tournament in West Virginia.
