Glenbard North squeezes out win vs. WW South
Josh Sanew laid out the consequences of a suicide squeeze bunt gone bad.
"If she doesn't get that down," the Glenbard North coach said, "the coach looks pretty bad."
Susan Lindstrom made Sanew's gamble look genius. Lindstrom's squeeze bunt scored Jenny Blasius in the bottom of the 10th to give Glenbard North a 1-0 win over Wheaton Warrenville South on Friday in Carol Stream.
Blasius doubled past a diving WW South left fielder to lead off the inning and went to third on Jessica Norman's sacrifice bunt.
On the second pitch from WW South's Julianne LaFleur, Lindstrom popped a bunt between home plate and the mound. Blasius slid in safely ahead of LaFleur's flip home.
"So much was going through my mind," Lindstrom said. "I just knew I had to get that bunt down. If I would have missed the pitch, she probably would have been out."
Lindstrom also squeezed in Blasius in Glenbard North's 1-0 win over Marist a week ago.
"She got a perfect bunt," Sanew said. "It hung in the air a little bit where it was in between. We told our girl at third you're going hard regardless. You have to get a great jump. Execution got us the win there."
It was a frenetic end to 10 innings of crisply played softball. The teams combined for just 1 error. WW South center fielder Jessica Wasser threw out a runner at the plate in the first inning and made a shoestring catch in the fifth. Tigers second baseman Meaghan Sullivan made a diving stop of a grounder in the hole in the eighth.
Glenbard North pitcher Hannah Santora made a leaping snare of a bunt attempt and doubled off a runner in the second and stranded a pair of WW South baserunners in the third and eighth innings. Santora (6-3), who saw her streak of five straight shutouts snapped in a 3-2 loss to Naperville Central on Wednesday, struck out 11.
"My curveball was working," Santora said, "so I threw that a lot."
"She was unbelievable," Sanew said, "and it was good to see her rebound after that loss on Wednesday. That game is over and I think she said, 'I'm going to throw my game and get back to where Hannah Santora was throwing the ball before that loss.' "
Bri DiGioia was 2-for-3 with a double for Glenbard North (8-5, 1-1 DuPage Valley Conference) and was robbed of another hit on a running catch by WW South left fielder Sarah Skurla in the eighth. Skurla also reached base three times for WW South (8-8, 1-2), which was shut out by West Aurora ace Stephanie Becker on Wednesday.
"In the DVC every pitcher's good," WW South coach Denise McCance said. "You have to string hits together. You can't have one hit, then leave her on. You have to bunt her over and get her in."