Photo by Nick Henthorn MAKING A PLAY — Oak Glen's Brayley Lash makes a throw to first against Wheeling Park.

WHEELING — A softball season can be a grind with games day-in and day-out.

For the Oak Glen Golden Bears, Thursday’s game against the Wheeling Park Patriots was a lesson in perseverance.

Oak Glen, the defending WVSSAC Class AA state champions, picked up a 10-2 six-inning road win over the Wheeling Park Patriots, ending the Golden Bears’ third game in as many days.

“Just coming back up to bat,” Oak Glen Sherrie Garner said when asked what she saw from her team Thursday. “We saw them change the speed on us, they had some effective pitching, but it was just coming back up to the plate and taking advantage of the next opportunity. Making an out isn’t the end of the world.

“We’re rotating through that order and we’re not giving up, we’re still fighting. Our bats, we fouled some things off and we put it in play eventually.”

Mattie Carney picked up the win, pitching the entire game for Oak Glen and striking out 10 while surrendering three hits. The all-state junior also had two hits, a single and a double, while scoring twice and driving in one for her squad.

Senior Danica Holden smashed a homer to dead center in the top of the sixth to bring ’round Carney and herself, putting Oak Glen ahead 10-2 and clearing the run-rule limit at that point. Carney and the Bears would keep the Patriots off the scoreboard in the bottom half of the frame to end the game a bit early.

“Having runners on when that kind of bat comes up, that’s what you’re hoping for,” Garner said of Holden’s home run. “It was good to shorten the game up because we’ve had a week of game after game after game. We play tomorrow at Weirton too.”

Macy Hartung had a three-hit day, including two doubles for Oak Glen, while Holden doubled as well. Navaeh Heath and Mikayln Balch each had two hits. Braylee Lash tripled for the Bears.

For Park, sophomore Brenna Tipton doubled and drove in a run to highlight the Patriots’ offense.

Harmony Bittner struck out four inside the circle for Park.

Wheeling Park head coach Patrick Durkin said his squad was also feeling the fatigue of a heavy schedule.

“Our girls, this is our fourth game in four days,” Durkin said. “We had a couple tough ball games, and tonight I think my girls were tired. It’s just, it’s the beast of softball at this time of year because you can play 32 games, and you got, like, 40 days to play them all. It’s a tough schedule. We were a little tired when we warmed up. We didn’t warm up as well as we could, you could tell that. I’m glad we’re having tomorrow off and we’ll get back at it Saturday.

“Oak Glen’s a nice team. I think we gave them a lot of chances. You go up and down the line, there were small mistakes our girls made that they normally don’t make. They’re pretty solid ball players. They just played out of character tonight, but they’ll be back.”

Wheeling Park’s next game is on the road against Warren on Saturday.