Wauconda pulls out 6-4 win over Vernon Hills
No sooner had Wauconda coach Tim Rennels said it's hard to suppress Brittany Ehmann's smile than the sophomore pitcher got accidentally popped in the nose by teammate Cara Nance during some postgame horsing around.
Sure enough, as Ehmann's nose bled, with Nance and fellow Bulldogs aiding their wounded teammate, Ehmann stood grinning and giggling.
Understandable perhaps, considering Wauconda had just pulled out a 6-4 win over visiting Vernon Hills, overcoming an early grand slam by Cougars shortstop Anna Christensen.
"She'll smile at anything," Rennels said of Ehmann. "She'll hit a batter, and she'll smile."
All of Wauconda's players, coaches and fans were smiling Friday after the Bulldogs' win gave them a sweep of the defending North Suburban Prairie Division champions.
Wauconda (8-3, 2-0) and Vernon Hills (4-3, 0-2) had opened divisional play Wednesday with the Bulldogs winning 3-2 on Kate Martino's ninth-inning homer.
"I was mad after our loss on Wednesday," Christensen said. "I just wanted to beat this team so bad."
Christensen tried to do her part. Her first-inning grand slam - the first one of her life, she said - got Vernon Hills going. She belted a 3-2 pitch from Ehmann over the fence in left-center field.
"I'm pretty sure I threw a fastball in the wrong location," Ehmann said. "That would explain it, I guess."
It was the second homer hit at Wauconda's new park - which hosted one game last spring - and the second of Christensen's varsity career. She finished 2-for-4.
"I still get shocked when I hit home runs," Christensen said. "I was always the little skinny one when I was little. My first home run (against Marengo at Vernon Hills last year) was basically a fluke."
Christensen's grand slam did more than jump-start Vernon Hills' offense. It wiped the seemingly perpetual smile off Ehmann's face.
"I think the grand slam got it off for about an inning," Rennels said. "She settled in, shut them down the rest of the way and let our bats do the rest."
"I knew that I had to come back and stay strong," Ehmann said. "That's what you got to do when you get down."
Wauconda got a run in the third and then pulled even in the fourth thanks, in part, to Michelle Meyer's RBI double and Kendra Wedl's run-scoring triple. Wedl's game-tying hit knocked Vernon Hills starter Emily Evanson out of the game.
Wauconda's Stephanie Olson tripled with one out in the bottom of the fifth off Amanda Zusman and scored the go-ahead run on Ehmann's single.
Olson added an RBI single in the sixth. Adriana Longobardi led off the Vernon Hills seventh with a double, but Ehmann struck out the next three batters.
When she got the final out, she jogged off the field beaming.
"It's hard to describe that," said Ehmann, who pitched a 6-hitter with 9 strikeouts and also went 3-for-3 at the plate. "The second win over Vernon Hills in a week is a big thing for Wauconda."
Martino went 2-for-4 from the leadoff spot, as Wauconda pounded out 10 hits.
Vernon Hills stranded 9 runners.
"(Christensen's grand slam) was an awesome start," Cougars coach Paul Weber said.
"But after that, we had runners in scoring position a whole bunch of times and we just didn't hit the ball. And we made a lot of errors (4) - a lot of errors."