Second inning leads to Fremd winning

The goal for Fremd's softball team is to win every inning.

There was only one in Wednesday's semifinal of the Class 4A Barrington sectional where any runs were scored at all.

That inning was the second, and Fremd won it 3-1 over Zion-Benton.

The victory moves the top-seeded Vikings (30-4) into Saturday's championship game against the winner of No. 2 Barrington (32-3) against No. 3 Lake Zurich (28-7), who meet at 4:30 p.m. today.

The Vikings fell behind in the second inning when Veronica Kraly hit a towering home run that must have cleared the left-center fence by 30 feet and landed some 270 feet from home plate.

But in the bottom of the second, the Vikings received RBI singles from junior Alexis Cinquegrani, junior Tess Dinterman and sophomore Allie Gaeding for their 3 runs.

That was all Fremd junior ace Lena Brottman (18-3) needed as she fired a 5-hitter with 8 strikeouts and 1 intentional walk.

"Well, I thought our home run looked better than their three singles," joked Zion coach Rick Rymer, whose team ended at 24-12 as its freshman pitcher Janika May finished at 6-5.

"All three of those Fremd singles came on screwballs right on their hands," added the veteran coach. "You've got to give them a lot of credit. If they were able to get the bat on those, they deserved it."

The Vikings began the decisive inning with a leadoff walk to senior first baseman Jessica Tackett. Junior Kelly Voigt sacrificed her to second.

Cinquegrani then came through with the game-tying RBI single to center and the alert junior took second on the throw home.

"We always want to get the extra base if we can so it make it easier to score more runs," Cinquegrani said. "When she (Kraly) hit that home run, that was no fun. But we didn't let it bother us. We were really confident we could come back and we know Lena is a real good pitcher."

After belting her seventh homer of the season, Kraly almost had No. 8 in the fourth inning when she walloped the ball just two feet shy of going over the center-field fence.

Center fielder Dinterman played it perfectly and held Kraly to a single.

Brottman got out of the inning with a strikeout and pop up back to the mound.

"She's (Kraly) a great athlete," Brottman said. "They were great hits. I love those challenges. There's nothing you can do when she hits them like that. You just have to go back and get the job done."

With a runner on first in the sixth inning and two outs, Kraly had one more chance.

But Vikings coach Jim Weaver decided against it.

He had Brottman intentionally walk Kraly.

It paid off as the Vikings got the next batter on a lineout to second baseman Lauren Zaworski.

"We didn't want to tangle with her at all," said Weaver about facing Kraly a third time. "She hit two balls as hard as you can imagine. But it was a fine line there if you should put her on base or not. She would have been the tying run."

Weaver also credited catcher Kristine Werling and Brottman with the execution of the intentional walk.

"I thought we played a clean game," Weaver added. "I can't take issue with anything we did. We hit the ball hard. They made every play imaginable on us. We executed our game plan well.

"Defensively we did what we wanted to do. And I thought Lena pitched a very good game against a quality team."

Cinquegrani (2-for-3) was Fremd's only multiple hitter while senior teammate Casey Latal also had a base hit.

"Give credit to Zion," Weaver added. "It was a great job by Rick (Rymer), who I have known for as long as I've been doing this."