The Wildcats are hot.

The Wilsonville softball team is smoking hot, searing hot, walking on the sun hot.

The Wildcats proved that again on Friday, May 2, racing past Putnam 7-2 at Wilsonville High School for their sixth straight win and 10th in their last 11 games. In its last six games, Wilsonville has outscored its opponents 71-2.

“We’re just focusing on the little things and preparing for the bigger teams that are going to be a lot harder,” said Wilsonville freshman pitcher Addi Smith, who allowed two runs on seven hits and four walks while striking out nine. “That and just keeping our confidence up and letting our team know that we always have each other’s backs.”

“We’ve been playing good,” said Wildcat sophomore catcher Morgan Christiansen, who went 2 for 4 at the plate with one RBI and one run scored. “We just keep fighting. When something hard happens, we don’t hang our heads – we just keep battling and we want to win.”

“Our lineup is super, super strong,” added Wilsonville junior third baseman Bailee Van Meter, who went 1 for 3 with one RBI and one run. “We’ve been working a lot on starting early, getting our runs at the beginning of the game and I think that mindset has been helping a lot. That and just trusting each other, trusting our bats.”

With the win, the 10th-ranked Wildcats’ sixth straight, Wilsonville improved to 8-1 in Northwest Oregon Conference play and 13-6 overall. Next up, the Wildcats play Putnam at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 6, at Putnam High School.

The No. 22 Kingsmen, meanwhile, lost for the 11th straight time and fell to 0-7 in NWOC play and 4-12 overall. Putnam was led by sophomore pitcher Ellie Strauss (she went 2 for 4 at the plate) and senior catcher Kalani Lyman-Kasch (she went 1 for 4 with a two-run homer, two RBIs and one run).

After Smith tossed a scoreless first inning at Putnam, the Wildcats broke through for three runs in their half of the inning, scoring one run on an error, one on a sacrifice fly from Smith and the third on an RBI single by junior Mandy Russell.

Wilsonville then boosted its edge to 4-0 in the second when Van Meter singled to left and scored on sophomore Olivia Meoak’s two-out double to right-center.

Smith kept Putnam off the scoreboard for the game’s first four innings – stranding eight runners along the way – but she wasn’t so lucky in the fifth. There, Kingsman senior Ambur Livingston led off with a walk and Lyman-Kasch followed with a one-out homer to right-center that brought their team within 4-2.

Smith came back strong after that, though, striking out two Putnam batters to end the fifth and stranding three runners the rest of the way.

“I just tried to focus a lot on hitting my spots more and not letting (the home run) get to my head,” Smith said.

Undaunted, Wilsonville put the game away with three runs in the bottom of the sixth, getting an RBI sacrifice fly from Van Meter, another run on an error and a run-scoring single to center from Christiansen.

“I definitely think our lineup is really really strong,” Van Meter said. “We’ve all played together for a really long time so we’re used to stringing our hits together as a team.”

“We focus on each game at a time and we focus on every inning,” Christiansen said. “We say ‘We’re going to win this inning. We’re going to win this at-bat. We’re going to win this play,’ and I think if we just keep focusing on the little things, I think we’re going to go far.”