Stevenson sweeps Prospect

It had to be a first:

Stevenson senior center fielder Alyssa Vechiola, a left-handed hitter, faced Prospect lefty Samantha Mangrum in the first game of a softball doubleheader Saturday morning in windswept Lincolnshire. Mangrum’s catcher was Amanda Forssander, yet another southpaw.

And the home-plate umpire, no lie, used his left hand to toss a ball to Mangrum after another ball was fouled off.

“Really?” Vechiola said after she was informed of the unusual confluence of portsiders. “Funny. That’s too funny.”

Too odd.

Also peculiar: an athlete who executes double backs in the winter and hits doubles in the spring. Stevenson junior right fielder Ali Castriano is her name, and her games are gymnastics and softball. She captured the state balance-beam title a couple of winters ago.

On Saturday, Castriano, wearing No. 9 for the Patriots, earned a “10” in the bottom of the seventh inning of a 4-3 Game 1 triumph. With her team trailing 3-1, she ripped a double to left field to knock in classmate Lara Horwitz, who had opened the frame with a double, also to left.

Castriano raced home from second base, after a sharp infield single by Emma Patrash, to tie it at 3-3. Patrash had mashed a pitch that glanced off a Knights glove and scurried toward foul territory, north of third base.

Castriano put her head down, churned her legs.

And listened.

“I heard (third-base and head coach Larry Friedrichs) yell, ‘Go, go, go,’ ” Castriano said.

She went — fast.

An infield error, on a Vechiola at-bat, allowed Stevenson to plate the game-winner right after Castriano’s dash.

The win stunned the visitors and spoiled Mangrum’s fine effort from the circle (4 IP, O ER, 2 H, 1 K, 3 BBs). She had exited with a 3-1 lead.

Stevenson skipped to a 13-3, 5-inning victory in Game 2, thanks to a 5-run first inning and senior Heather Cohen’s 5-RBI performance.

“We’re always there in games … right there, so close to winning,” said Knights coach Jim Adair, in near exasperation as he recalled Game 1. “The opportunities were there for us; we should not have held only a 3-1 lead (after 6 innings).”

Senior shortstop Nikki Surico connected in the fifth inning for Prospect’s biggest hit of the day, launching a 2-run triple to the base of the wall in left field. An error and a Mary Styzek single preceded Surico’s clutch hit in the opener.

“Such a leader, such a tough player,” Adair said of Surico, after his club slipped to 4-12. “And what a dedicated, competitive kid she is. When we lose, nobody takes it harder than she does.”

Pats sophomore righty Sam Feder (2 ER, 10 H, 1 K, 1 BB) went the distance for the win in Game 1. Prospect scored only 1 run (via a wild pitch) in the fourth inning, after three of the first four Knights singled. Feder could not have picked a better moment to record her lone K on Saturday: with two outs and the bases loaded, in the top of the seventh.

In the second game, Cohen’s run-scoring single in the second inning put the Pats (10-4) up 7-0. She also struck a pair of 2-run hits (single, double).

“The momentum we had, from the end of the first game, carried over for us to the beginning of the second game,” said Cohen, Stevenson’s No. 5 hitter. “Everybody was happy and excited between games, as we sat around and talked.”

Patrash also wielded a loquacious bat in the second game. Stevenson’s lead-off hitter went a deafening 4-for-4, doubling twice and tripling once. Her run-scoring double in the third inning increased the advantage to 9-1.

“What we did in the second game was what we’d been talking about,” Friedrichs said. “We’d talked about winning each inning and the importance of jumping on teams early.”

Vechiola, in only her fourth game of the spring after suffering an ACL tear last May, knocked in Stevenson’s first run — on the last day of April — in Game 2. Horwitz, Castriano, Ashley Niedermayer, Nicole Alesi and Bridget Poetker also each drove in a run for the victors.

Poetker, technically, didn’t drive in a run on Saturday. But she got credit for an RBI. Her walk-off walk, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth inning, upped the lead to 13-3 and triggered the mercy rule.

Pats freshman Katherine Trotter tossed a 4-hitter, fanning three and walking three.