Aberdeen Central had chances early before Yankton broke through late on Tuesday afternoon at the Aberdeen Dome.

The Gazelles pulled away from a three-run lead with a dozen runs in the fourth inning in a 15-0 Eastern South Dakota Conference softball victory.

“It started out competitive and just a really close ball game there and just keeping things tight, and then we weren’t able to chip away and produce on offense,” said Central coach Cassidy Neer. “I think that just kind of burnt us out, just playing from behind the whole game was tough and it just kind of got away from us there about midgame.”

The Golden Eagles had their moments in the field, including getting out of a bases-loaded jam in the third inning with an unassisted double play when third baseman Rylee Beyer snagged a line drive and stepped on the bag.

“We made some big plays at times,” Neer said, “but we also just didn’t capitalize at the plate. We just gotta do that. You can’t do much with 0 runs.”

Central did have runners in scoring position in both the second and third innings. Estelle Riggs made it all the way to third base before Yankton ended the threat.

The freshman talked about the strategy of batting, noting she has learned how to time up pitches better after her first varsity at-bat last week.

“I’ve learned over the past few games to be able to watch the ball, because you need to,” Riggs said. “Today when it was my first at-bat I did swing and it was a completely off swing. It was too fast. You just need to able to watch them.”

Riggs, a solid tennis player for the Golden Eagles, said one of the main comparisons between the two sports is the swing.

“Maybe between swinging my tennis racket and swinging my bat. Neer brought that up to me at the start of the season if it’s like that. I think it kind of is like that,” Riggs said. “You need the power to swing your racket and the power to swing your bat.”

Riggs has played a flawless first base out on the diamond.

When asked if takes some time to learn how to play the position, Riggs responded, “Yeah it does, but it’s also a fact that I very good teammates that are able to throw to me and we’re able to have that kind of connection.”

The Gazelles scored five runs to start the fourth frame and it appeared that Central might get out of the inning after recording back-to-back outs. However, the visitors then tacked on seven more runs to eventually invoke the 15-run rule in the bottom half of the inning.

Despite the setback, Neer saw positives in the field as the Golden Eagles cut off balls that could have rolled into the gaps.

“Things really got away from us there, but there were a lot of good takeaways, just with our defensive cuts, and stopping the bleed on big hits,” Neer said. “We didn’t really give up a lot of hits where bases cleared until the very end there. Getting the ball in quickly from the outfield was very big at the start of this game.”

Central, which was held hitless, did have four baserunners, but facing a deficit cut down on the Golden Eagles’ ability to be aggressive on offense.

“We kind of talked about that, where once we fall behind like that our options get limited,” Neer said. “We were in the situation to bunt a couple of times, but the gap was just too big to risk an out and we just couldn’t do that, so our options got pretty small, pretty quick.”

The Golden Eagles will hit the road for the first time this season on Thursday where they will also play outside for the first time with a contest at Mitchell.

“I think we just need to have more fun next game,” Riggs said, “and to be able to come back from that.”

Yankton 102 (12) – 15 9 0

Aberdeen Central 000 0 – 0 0 2

Reese Garry, September Rauch (4), Brenna Elwood (4) and Kyra Tjeerdsma; Abby Frank, Sydney Hoag (4) and Alivia Roettele. 2B – Yankton, Tjeerdsma 2, Jocelyn Behrns, Kalli Koletzy.