North Callaway saw Wednesday’s home game as a test.

Two-time defending state champion and Class 3 No. 1 Fatima was across the diamond from the Ladybirds. The Lady Comets collected 12 hits against Lauren Speight to hand North Callaway a 6-1 loss. 

Head coach Mariah McKee said much can be learned from going against an opponent of Fatima’s caliber and a lot of her takeaways were positive.

“Lauren did a great job in the circle,” McKee said. “She did a great job at getting ground balls and fly balls, and her defense worked great behind her. Being able to at least hold our own against an opponent like that, it’s good for us.”

Speight pitched seven innings for North Callaway (16-9) and allowed six runs (four earned) and two walks. Half of Fatima’s runs occurred in the first inning on RBI hits by Madelyn Backes and Lilly Cunningham, who each had two RBI for the Lady Comets (18-4).

McKee said there were “fluke plays” that went in Fatima’s favor, like some of the hitters in the first inning threw the bat out to drop a looping base hit into the outfield. Two scored in the fifth inning on an errant throw to first base, and one more crossed in the seventh on a groundout.

“When Lauren had a really good pitch, they got their bat on it and hit a gap or just the flukes that were in between our outfields and infields,” McKee said. “Those can be hard to defend. Other than that, we really played well.”

Abigail Schmidt responded to those three first-inning runs with a RBI double in the bottom half of the inning. Schmidt extended her RBI streak to four games with that hit. Her younger sister, Megan Schmidt, finished 2-for-3 at the plate.

Kliethermes didn’t allow much other than that from the North Callaway offense. She was able to induce late swings from the Ladybirds and receive called strike threes later in the game.

“She throws an inside pitch very well, and she has a backdoor curve,” McKee said. “It broke late. She had those two things working for her great. She worked her change in great to keep us off-balance.”

McKee said North Callaway was still able to put the ball in play most of the time against this “great pitcher.” To make a deep run this year, the Ladybirds need to do that consistently.

Fielding the ball will also make or break the season as it was the key factor in the previous night’s 6-2 loss at Louisiana. North Callaway committed seven errors in that game, forcing the game to be “packed up and not even in the forefront,” McKee said. 

A pair of sparkling plays against Fatima served as evidence that the Ladybirds truly forgot the Louisiana game. In the second inning, left fielder Ella Slater made a diving catch to preserve a 1-2-3 inning. Fatima would have scored in the third inning if not for third baseman Liv Knoepflein’s inning-ending double play, which saw her catch a ball down the line before perfectly executing a rundown that eventually tagged out the runner.

“Facing opponents like this, they’re going to hit the ball so we have to play defense,” McKee said. “That was one thing that we talked about going into today. They’re going to hit so we have to be steady behind Lauren.”

North Callaway expects to face high-caliber competition Saturday, including possibly the other Class 3 No. 1 Centralia in the Centralia Invitational. The Ladybirds are the third seed that will play No. 6 seed Kirksville (9-12) at 10:45 a.m. on the Bicentennial Park East Field, hoping a victory will earn them a possible rematch with Class 3 No. 3 Hallsville (13-4) at around 2:15 p.m.