So far this season no team has been able to take down the North Platte softball team (10-0), who is off to its best start since 2015 as the Lady Panthers have outscored their opponents 120-22 up to this point.
North Platte freshman Kate Wolf has been one of the Lady Panthers top pitchers thus far.
North Platte has been so dominant this season that it has only trailed for half of an inning, which was when Dekalb (1-7) took a 4-3 lead in the top of the third inning on August 29. Carly Hinton had an RBI double in the bottom of the third inning to tie the game before the Lady Panthers rattled off 11 unanswered runs to win 15-4.
North Platte has scored double digit runs in all but one game, the 8-4 road win over Bishop LeBlond (2-3) on August 31. North Platte went on to take down St. Joseph’s Lafayette (1-2) by a score of 12-7 as those are the only two games where the final score was within double figures.
In the 13-2 win over Stewartsville with Osborn (0-5) on September 7, five Lady Panthers had at least two hits. The first game of KCI Conference play took place the next day and was a road matchup against Lathrop (3-5), the same team that eliminated North Platte 19-17 in the postseason last fall and had eight consecutive wins in the series dating back to September 3, 2015.
For the first time since 2013, North Platte defeated Lathrop by double digits, this time by a score of 12-1. The Lady Mules opened the contest with two consecutive errors that put North Platte in position for three runs in the first inning.
Lathrop added a run in the bottom of the first inning but was shut out and only had one more hit the rest of the way. North Platte doubled its score in the top of the third inning when Camryn Kersten, Lindsay Ramsey, Courtney Dehn and Brooke Kretzer all had singles.
With a 6-1 margin, the Lady Panthers kept their foot on the gas and added five more runs in the fourth inning and capped off the first conference win of the season with one final run in the fifth inning. Kersten and Dehn both had three hits and Kate Wolf struck out four batters.
North Platte won its tenth consecutive game of the season with a 12-2 win over Stanberry (0-8) on September 12. The Lady Panthers added Sherwood (8-0) – who is the reigning Class 2 Runner-Up – to the schedule on September 13.