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Softball: Yorkville upsets top-seeded Geneva

The Yorkville softball squad's pitching tag team of Hannah Jaros and Katie Marker stymied Geneva in Saturday's Class 4A Yorkville regional title game.

The duo pitched the No. 9 seed Foxes to a 5-4 upset win over the top-seeded Vikings for the regional crown.

Yorkville (17-14) will play No. 4 seed West Aurora on Tuesday in the Bolingbrook sectional semifinals.

Marker replaced starter Jaros in the circle in the bottom of the fourth inning after Geneva, trailing 4-1, got its first 2 batters on base. Marker retired the next three hitters to end the threat.

The Vikings reached Marker for 3 runs in the in the fifth and sixth innings and trailed by a run when the junior right-hander started the seventh.

After giving up a leadoff single, Yorkville coach Jory Regnier gave the ball back to Jaros who retired the next three batters to save her own victory.

"They were coached well in terms of switching up their pitchers. When it seemed like we got into a groove on one, they put in the other one," said Geneva coach Greg Dierks. "It was a gutsy move to go back to the first one. Their pitchers did a good job and their defense made a couple plays when they had to."

"If one of our pitchers is getting hit a little bit, we will switch it up," Regnier said. "We didn't tell (Janos) that necessarily she had to come back in, but she is senior and why wouldn't we want to put her in that situation? She is totally and mentally able to be in that situation - she is a very composed pitcher."

Yorkville scored 2 runs on starting pitcher Emily Viebrock to take the lead in the top of the second. The first two batters reached base on an infield error and a walk. The first run scored on Ally Martin's sacrifice fly and the second on Kara Aloisio's single.

The Foxes stretched their lead to 4-0 in the next inning on Dani Evans' 2-run homer to center.

Geneva got back one run in the bottom of the third, a Katie Keller solo dinger over the left field fence.

Yorkville scored its final run on an infield error in the fifth.

"I knew that they had been playing very well and I knew we would get a tough game - we were ready for that," Dierks said. "We weren't sharp defensively at times as we have been. They hit a few balls hard and got the ball in play consistently and made us work. A couple of times we weren't up to the task and they were able to take advantage of it."

Geneva made it 5-2 in the bottom of the fifth. Kaitlyn Plocinski's single up the middle plated Kyla Chenier.

Alyssa Kramer opened Geneva's sixth with a double to left.

Ali Dierks, who came on in relief in the fifth, followed and put the Vikings within a run with a 2-run blast to center.

Sam Keller got the third straight hit of the inning with a single to left. The freshman shortstop was stranded at third base as Marker retired the next 3 batters.

"There were a number of times I felt like we were one swing away from changing the momentum to our side where we might have them but they just kept holding us off," said Greg Dierks.

Geneva, which won 29 games in a row and the Upstate Eight Conference River Division title, finished the season 31-3.

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