Fenton can’t get past Guerin

“Wait till next year” doesn’t feel so good right after a season-ending loss.

“We keep moving a little bit further every year,” Fenton softball coach Dave Mello said after Wednesday night’s 4-0 loss to Guerin in the Class 3A Elmwood Park sectional semifinals. “It’s only the second time we won 20 games in a season. And we’re still very young. We only lose two girls.”

“We wanted to prove that we could do better,” Fenton senior center fielder Candice Rivera said, “but overall the season was pretty good and we did better than we expected to do.”

Guerin (19-10), which ended Fenton’s season last year also, showed its power in the bottom of the first inning when No. 3 hitter Molly Campbell homered over the left-field fence, giving the Gators a 2-0 lead.

“I was just telling Molly’s mother, if we don’t get those 2 runs in the first inning, it’s a 0-0 game in the fourth inning,” Gators coach Tom Stein said. “We didn’t push across another run for a long time, so that really changed the game around. That was just a nice easy swing. She wasn’t even trying to hit a home run.”

“It set us back a little bit,” Bison senior first baseman Tara Lawson added. “We knew we could bounce back, but it didn’t turn out in the end like that.”

The Bison (20-18) couldn’t score. They got the leadoff batter on base in each of the first four innings, but only one runner reached third against Guerin left-hander Sarah Benavides (9-5).

“She was throwing pretty good,” Rivera said. “It was hard to get a read on her. ... She was pretty hittable, so we probably should have hit better than we did tonight.”

Benavides dealt with a scare in the fourth when a line drive struck her in the leg, knocking her immediately to the ground. She got up after a couple of minutes and stayed in the game.

“When she was laying on the ground I thought she was finished for the game, because there were tears in her eyes,” Stein said. “That hurt. Thank goodness there was a trainer, and she was tough. She did not want to come out.”

“We get to this point in the postseason, we tell our girls it’s pitching and defense that’s going to advance you,” Mello said. “In no way was it our pitching and defense why we’re not advancing, it was Guerin’s pitching and defense. All the credit in the world. That girl’s a freshman. She took that line shot off the leg, bounced right back.”

The freshman pitcher got out of a first-and-third situation in the fourth inning with a pair of strikeouts, then set the Bison down in order in the fifth, sixth and seventh to earn her first shutout.

“After she got hit by that line drive, to stay in the game, she has really matured a lot since the beginning of the season,” Stein said.