Softball: St. Charles North breaks loose, downs Bartlett
When you haven't played a game in more than two weeks, patience is a virtue.
After hitting into unconventional double plays in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, St. Charles North's softball team finally broke a 4-4 deadlock with a clutch hit against Bartlett Tuesday afternoon.
Senior pitcher Jillian Waslawski helped her own cause by smacking a 3-run double to deep left with 2 out in the top of the sixth while helping lift the North Stars (4-1, 1-0) to an 8-5 Upstate Eight Conference crossover victory over the host Hawks (3-2, 0-1).
Marilyn Webb led off the sixth with a double before Laine VandeHei singled and Jessica Wilson walked to load the bases with nobody out.
For a brief time, however, it appeared that the North Stars were going to waste another golden scoring opportunity after hitting into a 1-2-3 double play - with the batter heading to first called out for running inside the baseline.
But after Ashlyn Jozefowicz walked to load the bases, Waslawski came through with the bases-clearing double on a 2-1 pitch from Hawks reliever Amber Pagan.
"I know Amber is a great pitcher so I had to be smart with what I had in front of me," said Waslawski, who drove in 4 runs and pitched a complete game with 3 strikeouts. "With everyone on base, I just had to find my pitch and take it where I wanted it to go."
North Stars coach Tom Poulin was happy to see Waslawski get the opportunity.
"We want Jill up in that situation," said Poulin. "I know they walked (Jozefowicz) to get a force at any base but I was very pleased to see Jill come up with the bases loaded. She's a very good hitter. That's who we want up there."
Webb (2-for-3) added an RBI single for the North Stars in the seventh before Taylor Rotondo drove in the Hawks' final run with a sacrifice fly in the bottom half of the frame.
"Two-out RBIs in the sixth and seventh - that's the difference," said Poulin. "We've been talking a lot about that because we've had a lot of time to walk. It's one of the things that we track and it's what separated us today."
Grace Quinn, Waslawski, VandeHei and Webb enjoyed multihit games for the North Stars.
"I thought we made some mistakes and missed some signs but a lot of those things won't happen in a week," said Poulin. "They shouldn't happen now but we'll clean all that up. We knocked a little bit of the rust off and did enough to win."
Annamarie Bucaro led the Hawks with 3 hits, including a pair of doubles, while Charlotte Linnartz added 2 doubles and Pagan drove in a pair of runs.
"Offensively, we did a good job against a real good pitcher," said Hawks coach Jim Wolfsmith. "It was like the start of the season - part two. Realistically, we haven't been on a field practicing either for a while.
"There were some physical and mental errors that we've got to clean up if we want to beat teams at that level."