Better late than never: WWS tops Benet
Krysta Watts wasn't thinking about the driver's ed class she was already late for.
She tried not to over-think her at bat. She had a game to win.
The Wheaton Warrenville South freshman's run-scoring single with two outs in the bottom of the eighth gave the Tigers 4-3 win over Benet on Tuesday in Wheaton.
"I was having a lot of trouble in my earlier at bats," Watts said, "and Hannah (Granger) told me not to think too much up there. Personally, I think I swing better when I don't think too much up there. I just tried to make contact."
Granger reached on an error in the infield with one out in the eighth inning of a tie game. Meaghan Sullivan then lifted a pop-up between the pitcher's mound and home plate that was dropped, putting two runners on. Bekah Munday sacrificed the runners over, setting up Watts' heroics.
"Our shortstop kind of rushed her throw after bobbling the ball," Benet coach Jerry Schilf said. "We have to catch that next pop-up. The girls know that. They have to get that from the pitcher."
Watts pulled a groundball just through the hole between shortstop and third into left field for the game-winner.
"She does better with the inside pitches because she's a hitter that opens her shoulders," WW South coach Denise McCance said. "It's a good pitch for her to handle."
Watts, WW South's catcher, was part of a bang-bang play at the plate that sent the game to extra innings. With two outs in the top of the seventh Courtney Makowski lined a single to right field. WW South's Izzy Vogt fired a strong throw to the plate, but Benet's Lauren Ladowski slid around Watts' tag for the tying run.
"That kind of knocked the wind out of me a little bit," Watts said, "that I couldn't tag her out."
Earlier in the game Vogt threw out a runner at first on a hit to right field. WW South center fielder Jessica Wasser threw out what would have been the tying run at the plate in the sixth inning.
WW South (5-3) won its second game of the season in its final at bat - both by batters near the bottom of the order. Sarah Skurla beat St. Charles North with a seventh-inning game-winner two weeks ago. Sullivan went 2-for-3 with a sacrifice and Julianne LaFleur (4-2) struck out 10 for the Tigers.
"That's what I like about this team," Watts said. "We don't have a superstar - just a lot of good players that feed off of each other."
WW South scored an unearned run in the second, and Granger's 2-run single in the third made it 3-0. Benet, unbeaten coming into Tuesday, pulled to within a run on Allyson Staats' 2-run double in the fourth. Staats, Ladowski and Nora McGuire each had 2 hits for Benet (4-1), and Meghan Eastman struck out 8 batters.
"We were behind after three innings and looked dead out there," Schilf said, "and all of a sudden we started swinging the bats. We have nothing to be ashamed of, except for those errors. We had our chances."