WW South mixes things up, sweeps Glenbard West
Sometimes a little tweak in the lineup can make a huge difference in sparking a team's offense.
Hoping to give his squad a little boost, Wheaton Warrenville South softball coach Jeff Pawlak split up his high on-base percentage, slap hitters, leaving one near the top of the order and moving the other down to the six hole. The strategy worked to perfection in the first game of Saturday's nonconference doubleheader at Glenbard West, an 8-1 victory for the Tigers.
No. 2 hitter Madison Marcheschi went 2-for-4 with a run scored and fellow slap hitter Aerin Moberg - bumped down to the bottom half of the lineup - reached safely four times and scored twice. With Sydne Shattuck pitching a 4-hitter and striking out 10, Wheaton Warrenville South's attack provided more than enough support.
"We came through at the top and so did Aerin, definitely," said Marcheschi, who scored the game's first run in the third following a bunt single and a stolen base. "It was a good win. We all contributed."
The Tigers, who took the nightcap 10-2 to improve to 6-4 on the year, scored four times in the top of the fourth to take command of Game 1. Moberg, who went 3-3 with a walk in the game and reached safely all eight trips to the plate, singled and scored in the big inning. The Hilltoppers were guilty of three errors in the inning and never recovered.
"I thought we kind of let the errors carry over to the rest of our game. We had two double plays, and they ran into some outs, but then it was the routine groundball plays that we were not making," said Glenbard West coach Mary McGrane, whose team dropped to 2-5 with Saturday's losses.
The Hilltoppers stranded four runners through two innings, then didn't do much against Shattuck from there aside from a Katherine Porter solo home run in the sixth.
"I felt really good out there," said Shattuck, now 4-3 in the circle. "My whole team was backing me up, which is awesome. It's really nice when you have them all working on the field and at the plate."
Shattuck started a 3-run rally in the top of the seventh, and sophomore Kaitlyn Bresingham had a sharp RBI single as the visitors padded their lead late.
"We hit the ball harder. We got some help, but we hit it harder," Tigers coach Jeff Pawlak said. "We were on our front foot early in the game and they were flying out. But then we started staying back and we put some better swings on the ball."
And that's when the team's speed and new look really paid off.
"We've got some speed. With Aerin and Madison we've got some girls who can run and that helps," Pawlak added. "Right now we have the slappers staggered in the order so it's sort of like a new leadoff later in the order."
In the second game Kacie Vlach (2-1) earned the win and Moberg scored 4 runs, while Shattuck drove home 3.