Barrington 8, Stevenson 1

The sister act was dynamite.

So were the bats of the Barrington battery.

And when Colleen Shandley, Lisa Shandley, Devinne Wapotish and Kim Cygan were done Wednesday, they had their top-seeded and Class 4A tourney host Fillies off and rolling to another appearance in a sectional championship softball game with an 8-1 victory over No. 5 Stevenson at the Fields oflincolmn Dreams.

The Fillies (28-6) will face the winner of today's 4:30 p.m. semifinal between No. 2 Fremd (28-3) and No. 12 Carmel (15-17) in Saturday's 11 a.m. championship game.

Senior Lisa Shandley and her freshman sibling Colleen -- the No. 1 and 2 hitters in the Mid-Suburban League champion's batting order -- reached base a combined 7 of 8 times (6-for-8) and scored 6 of the Fillies' 8 runs.

Winning pitcher Cygan was 3-for-4 with an RBI while senior catcher Wapotish went 3-for-3 with 3 RBI, including a pair of doubles to the right-center field gap.

"It was a simple formula," said Barrington coach Perry Peterson, whose team won the school's 12th regional crown last week. "Keep the ball in play, keep it on the ground (slap-hitting Shandleys) and pound it when you need to (Wapotish and Cygan).

"Kim was terrific. She pitched well. She's on her game at this time of the year."

Wapotish, obviously, is too.

She put down a perfect sacrifice bunt in the first inning to move runners to second and third and then drilled back-to-back doubles followed by an infield single

"She's (Wapotish) a good hitter," Peterson said. "She can hit to the left-center gap, the right-center gap, down the line, wherever. She can hit."

The Patriots' top hitter was senior leadoff batter Traci Africk, who went 3-for-4 and scored their only run in the fifth on Tovah Schwartz' RBI single to center.

Schwartz was 2-for-3 and Annalise Docel, Rebekah Ozga and Claire Kirchner had hits for the Patriots (19-18).

"Year in and year out Barrington is a great team," said Stevenson Hall of Fame coach Larry Friedrichs, who guided the Patriots to their ninth regional crown. "But I thought we would fare better. Maybe had we scored earlier in the game it could have been a different story."

Instead, Barrington got the jump with 2 runs in the first on Michal Jane Maropis' RBI groundout and Cygan's RBI single.

"Barrington executed well and unfortunately," Friedrichs said, "some of the things we'd been doing well the last few games and in the first half of the season, we did not do as well this time."

Sophomore Allison Micucci (8-9) went the first 3 innings (2 strikeouts) for Stevenson while classmate Jordan Willis (2 strikeouts) went the final three and did not give up run.

Cygan (27-6) struck out seven and didn't issue a walk.

"Kim was good," Wapotish said. "It's always hard when you don't know what to expect from the other team. We knew they'd (Stevenson) be better than the first time we played them (6-0 win April 5). We weren't taking anything for granted. We just came to play hard."