South Elgin 9, St. Charles East 8
Caitie Stredde needed a shot of confidence.
She got a whole glass full.
Struggling just a bit at the plate lately Stredde, South Elgin's sophomore leadoff hitter, lined a shot off the tip of the shortstop's glove with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning Tuesday to score Brittany Boelter with the winning run as the Storm came from behind to defeat St. Charles East 9-8 in an Upstate Eight Conference softball game at South Elgin.
"Mentally I have to get back into hitting," said Stredde, an all-area player last year who was hitting .285 coming into Tuesday's game. "The pitchers are better this year, but I'm finally starting to hit. If my teammates start hitting I usually do too."
It was St. Charles East that was doing all the hitting early on Tuesday. The Saints (6-5, 4-1) parlayed 4 hits and 3 South Elgin errors into a commanding 7-0 lead off Storm junior left-hander Lauren Vitiello, who was making her first appearance of the season.
But as quickly as the Saints took their big lead, South Elgin (5-3, 2-3) started biting into it. The Storm scored 5 runs in the bottom of the third with the big knock coming off the bat of junior Florida transfer Kimberly Pierce, a 3-run blast over the left field fence and her third home run of the season. Courtney Bosteder's 2-run double 3 batters later made it a 7-5 game and gave the Storm some life.
South Elgin tied the game in the fourth when Pierce's two-out flyball to the outfield went off the fielder's glove, allowing Kiersa Parillo and Katelyn Stonecipher to score.
St. Charles East's Victoria Perez and South Elgin's Rebecca French, both pitching in relief, then held their opponents scoreless until the seventh when the Saints forged ahead 8-7, using a South Elgin throwing error and Cortney Morgan's bloop single to left to score Rebecca Reinbold, who had drawn a walk to lead off the inning.
But South Elgin stormed back in the bottom of the inning. Bosteder drew a leadoff walk and the Saints made a throwing error on Boelter's bunt, pushing Bosteder to third. She then beat the throw home when French bunted and the Saints threw to first, which also allowed Boelter to go to third Stredde, who had gone 0-for-3 before singling hard to the right side in the fifth. then ripped Perez's first pitch to the hole between third and short that was hit too hard for East shortstop Reinbold to do anything but get the tip of her glove on it as Boelter scored the winning run.
"Caitie is a great kid," said South Elgin coach Jason Schaal. "She's hit the ball hard lately but she really needed that hit as a confidence booster. This could propel her to get back on track."
Reinbold had a triple and Claire Desrosiers had 2 doubles for the Saints.
"You learn from it," said Saints coach Eric Ray. "Not one person on this team lost that game, we as a group lost that game and everyone out there learned something from it.
"You don't ever want to play like this in a conference game. We had this team buried. But kudos to South Elgin. They battled and battled. They really put their rally caps on."