WEBSTER CITY – Webster City No. 9 hitter Taylor Schnathorst made the most of her first plate appearance Wednesday night at Lynx Field. One swing and she said goodbye to the ball as it sailed over the fence in left-center field.

The only problem? Humboldt had three players that had already stepped into the batter’s box three times by the time Schnathorst finally got her turn.

Nothing the 12th-ranked (Class 3A) Wildcats did was as demonstrative as Schnathorst’s canon shot home run; they were content to nickel and dime WCHS into submission in a 10-3 victory that gave the visitors the outright lead in the North Central Conference.

Infield hits. Stolen bases. Sacrifice bunts. Safety squeeze bunts. You name it, Humboldt (11-1, 5-0 NCC) did it, and eventually the cracks in the WCHS defense began to show.

Humboldt only owned a small 8-7 advantage in hits, but eight Lynx errors led to eight unearned runs.

Ballgame.

“A lot of their hits weren’t what most people would call a hit because they played small ball once they got people on base,” WCHS head coach Jess Howard said. “It was an experience to try to handle that and hopefully we can get that taken care of before we meet them again.”

Carlie Thompson and Beth Duffield caused headaches for WCHS at the top of the Wildcats’ order. Thompson finished 2 for 5 with a double and two RBI. Duffield, a left-handed slap hitter, never got the ball out of the infield, and yet she produced three hits, four stolen bases and three runs scored.

Knotted at 1 after the first inning, the Wildcats broke the game open with six runs in the second. They sent 11 batters to the plate, put together four hits, took advantage of a WCHS error to score four unearned runs and, most menacing, bunted the Lynx dizzy.

Thompson laced her two-RBI double into the gap in left-center in the second and Halie George drove in another run with a base knock.

Tentative defensive decisions on the part of the Lynx in the second aided Humboldt’s outburst.

“Not being in that situation before, it makes you second-guess what you’re supposed to do,” Howard said. “That’s something that we know we have to work on in practice. We need to get that ironed out so we don’t have to deal with that again.”

Humboldt added two more unearned runs in the fourth and yet another courtesy of two more WCHS errors in the fifth.

Allie Flaws went 3 for 4 at the top of the Lynx lineup. She touched Wildcats’ starter Ellie Jacobson for a double down the line in left in the bottom of the first and then scored three batters later on a Cassidy Nerland RBI liner into the gap in right-center that also went for a double.

Schnathorst’s blast in the third cut the Lynx deficit to 7-2.

It was 10-2 in the sixth when pinch-runner Zoey Woodle reached the dish on a throwing error.

Taylor McKinney came off the Lynx bench to lash a base hit into left in the sixth. Chelsey Wagoner added a bunt single.

Jacobson struck out five in the circle en route to the victory. Gabbi Hoversten suffered the loss; the Lynx senior fanned four and walked two.

WCHS will face another daunting task tonight when it welcomes fourth-ranked (4A) Carlisle to Lynx Field for a non-conference contest at 7:15 p.m.