Fremd’s Doering gets some ‘D’

The Fremd softball team has been concentrating on defense.

It certainly seemed to be time well spent after seeing the results of Monday’s Mid-Suburban West game at Barrington’s Fields of Dreams.

The Vikings and senior pitcher Rachel Doering blanked the Fillies 3-0 while committing just 1 error.

“The defense was so good today,” said Doering, who was awfully good herself.

“I thought Rach pitched great.” said Fremd coach Jim Weaver. “That’s a good lineup she faced.”

Doering (9-2) fired a 5-hitter with 4 strikeouts against a lineup that scored 24 runs in a doubleheader at Libertyville on Saturday.

But the modest right-hander was deflecting any praise to her teammates.

“I had no doubt my teammates would get to every ball that was hit,” said Doering, who recently chose Ohio State to continue her education and major in biology. “We’ve been working on communicating on the field and that part of our game really stepped up.”

Fremd (18-5, 5-2) stepped up into a tie for second place with Barrington (17-4, 5-2) in the MSL West behind Conant (19-2, 7-0).

Doering got a 1-0 lead in the third inning when sophomore shortstop Leigh Farina led off with a triple to right and came home on Michelle Mazur’s double to right-center.

Barrington pitcher Cassidy Kraimer (9-3) prevented further damage by getting the next three batters, two on groundouts back to the mound. Fremd added another run in the sixth when Megan Hubbard led off with a double to left and Brittany Ciura was hit by a pitch.

Junior catcher Janelle Schneider sacrificed the runners to second and third. After a popout to shortstop Kelsey Kazmier, Hubbard was able to score when Tracy Welninski reached on an infield error.

Fremd got its final run in the seventh when Hubbard’s two-out single to left brought home Mazur, who had reached on an error.

Mazur (double), Farina (triple, double) and Hubbard (double) all went 2-for-4 while Caitlin Patenaude and Welninski had the other hits for Fremd.

“We had 6 hits in the first three innings but only got 1 run,” Weaver said.” We’ve got to get more runs there. We’ve got to make sure we get that third hit to get the runs in.

“I was happy, though, with our offense. Barrington played pretty good defense and shut us down when it had to.”

But Fremd shut down Barrington for all seven innings.

The Fillies had runners on first and third in the second with two outs when Doering struck out the final batter of the inning.

In the fourth, Barrington’s Raegan Fingerman (2-for-3) led off with a double followed by a walk to Tess Bolger.

However, the Vikings offense came up with a big double play that went from shortstop Farina to first baseman Mazur to second baseman Hubbard.

“We couldn’t get the timely hit and we didn’t run the bases well,” said Barrington coach Perry Peterson. “So there is no doubt Fremd deserved to win this game.

“On the positive side, Raegan Fingerman swung the bat well and Kelsey Kazmier made some outstanding plays at shortstop to help our cause.”

Kazmier sparkled especially in the fifth inning when she got all 3 assists, including a nice backhand stab on Farina’s hard-hit grounder.

Ally McLaughlin, Maggie O’Hara and Jordan Wekony also had hits for Barrington.

“We just need to continue to finds ways to get better,” Peterson added.

Weaver liked how his defense got better.

“We played much better there,” he said. “We worked on that so it’s nice to see it pay off. This was a good win. We love wins. It was a close game all the way through.”

And Doering made sure her team stayed ahead.

“We always say we want to win every inning,” she said. “We definitely got great hitting throughout the game, too.”