Emotions run high in Kaneland's win at Batavia
Katy Dudzinski and Delani Vest had a peculiar afternoon Tuesday in Batavia.
The former, called up from the Kaneland sophomore softball team over the weekend, relieved the Knights' ace with Vest on the hook for a loss in Western Sun Conference action against the Bulldogs.
But Vest, sabotaged by 5 fielding errors during her first four innings of work on the hill, authored a crucial hit in the Knights' sixth-inning comeback that Dudzinski finished with style.
Kaneland sent 11 batters to the plate in the sixth inning against Batavia, scoring seven times and added three insurance runs in the seventh as part of a 10-run unanswered blitz that turned a 5-run deficit into a 13-8 victory.
With Kaneland trailing 8-4 in its half of the sixth, Vest lined a vicious shot to the farthest reaches of the left-center field gap.
The sophomore, with Dudzinski and Jordan Hester scoring in front of her, raced all the way around the bases for a 3-run inside-the-park home run.
"I tried slapping earlier in the game, and that didn't work," Vest said. "(The Batavia center fielder) had to turn around (as I rounded second base), and I knew it went past her. That was probably the best hitting game we've ever had."
The Knights (9-5, 4-3 in the league) ultimately hit for the cycle in the sixth inning alone, slashing 7 of their 17 hits in the frame as Dudzinski came to the plate with the game tied at 8-8 with runners on first and second.
"I just wanted to make something happen," Dudzinski said. "I wanted to show why I was up here. I wanted to turn some heads, to show that I belonged here."
The sophomore lashed the Knights' fourth extra-base hit of the inning to the right-centerfield wall, scoring Brittany Davis and courtesy runner Alexis Villarreal.
Vest, whose older sister and battery-mate Riley went 3-for-5 on the day with one of the Knights' 6 extra-base hits, then returned to the mound to pitch the sixth and seventh innings.
The Knights' ace picked up her first save of the year.
"(Delani) was throwing pretty well," Kaneland coach Brian Willis said. "Our defense was pretty shaky, to be polite."
Batavia (12-14, 4-2 in the Western Sun) scored four times in the second and added three more in the third to take a 7-3 cushion as the squad capitalized on five Kaneland miscues in the field compounded by four walks.
Sophomore McKinzie Mangers' 2-run blast over the left-field fence in the third inning was the precursor to the Knights' 10-run onslaught over the final two innings, which was capped by consecutive run-scoring hits from Brittney Miller, Davis and Andrea Dimmig-Potts in the seventh.
The game ended with mutual recriminations as Batavia coach Leon Pedraza refused to shake Willis' hand after the contest, calling his actions during a controversial third-inning ejection of Kaneland freshman Allyson O'Herron on an interference play "classless."
"My AD (Mike Gaspari) is going to hit the roof when I tell him about it," Pedraza said, adding the issue was exacerbated by the widespread conviction that Kaneland school officials "were the primary instigators" of the pending dissolution of the Western Sun Conference.