Crystal Lake S. tops Dundee-Crown
Crystal Lake South softball coach Scott Busam is wanting his team to make a statement that it should be taken seriously in the upcoming Class 3A playoffs.
So you’ll have to excuse Busam if he wasn’t the happiest camper in Carpentersville Thursday when his Gators posted a 9-3 Fox Valley Conference Valley Division win at Dundee-Crown.
“I don’t think we played a good mental game today,” Busam said. “I did not like our mental approach out there. Very lackadaisical. This is practice for the playoffs and we know now we have things to work on before Wednesday.”
Busam was most disappointed at his team’s approach to the start of the game, when Dundee-Crown scored twice in the first inning by beating out two infield hits and using an error to take a 2-1 lead. Junior Melany Love also smoked an RBI triple to right-center field in the inning for the Chargers (2-22, 0-15).
But then South junior Hannah Mahoney and the Gators’ defense settle down while the offense did just enough, and used 6 D-C errors, to pull away.
The Gators (17-9, 7-8) scored twice in the top of the third to take the lead for good, using two Dundee-Crown errors and an RBI double from Jamie Beelow to go ahead 3-2.
Those 3 runs came off D-C junior Amanda Eissler, whose start, Busam said, threw off what the Gators had prepared for.
“We thought for sure Melany Love would be pitching for them and we got geared up to face her,” Busam said. “The girls got mentally ready for that. Love’s a good pitcher. But (D-C) Coach (Tracy) Beatty did a nice job of keeping things mixed up with her pitchers today.”
Beatty did go to Love, who is playing through a shoulder injury, in the fourth inning but the Charger defense let her down, making 2 errors that led to 3 unearned runs for the Gators, two scoring on errors and another on a passed ball.
“That’s the story of our lives,” said Beatty. “I really feel we can compete with almost anybody but the wheels come off in one inning and it destroys us. We’re in games. We always get into two-out situations and we just can’t focus on that third out.”
Mandy Moore then came on to finish the game for D-C. Moore allowed the Gators 2 runs on Tori Stevenson’s RBI double and an RBI single from Beelow (3-for-5, 3B) in the fifth but then shut the Gators down in the sixth and seventh.
Mahoney, meanwhile, allowed just 7 hits — 6 of them singles — and struck out nine while walking only one.
“It wasn’t my worst game but it wasn’t my best,” said Mahoney, now 7-8 on the season. “Our energy picked up a little (after the first inning). We started to get some hits on the board and that gave us confidence.”