Bartlett closes in on UEC Valley title
Bartlett played the bend but don’t break game with South Elgin Friday, and the Hawks never snapped.
While its 6-3 win over the Storm may not have been Bartlett’s crispest win this season, it brought the Hawks one game closer to the Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division championship, which they can claim outright with a win over second-place Waubonsie Valley at home on Monday. With 4 conference games to play, Bartlett maintained a 3-game lead over Waubonsie with Friday’s win.
Senior Amanda Montbriand moved to 9-0 on the season in the circle with the win. Although she gave up 9 hits and had a little shaky start to the game, she settled down and didn’t allow the Storm to score again after her team grabbed a 5-3 lead through four innings.
“We knew South Elgin was playing very good softball coming in,” said Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith of a Storm team that had beaten Waubonsie Valley, Neuqua Valley and Lake Park in its last 3 games. “Amanda wasn’t sharp at the beginning but she hadn’t pitched in about a week. She got her rhythm in the middle innings and settled down.”
Despite the Storm (12-18, 9-8) having runners on base in every inning, Montbriand was able to limit South Elgin’s scoring chances with good control and a solid defense late in the game.
“We knew (South Elgin) would come out strong,” said Montbriand, who struck out 3 and walked 2. “I just had to bear down, know my pitches and have confidence in my defense.”
The teams traded early unearned runs and the game was tied at 2-2 after two innings. Andreana Taormina singled and scored on an error in the first for No. 2 Bartlett (25-3, 15-0), which won its 12th straight game and its 20th in its last 21. Holly Pagan did the same for the Hawks in the second after South Elgin had scored twice in the top of the inning to take a short-lived 2-1 lead. After a walk and an error put Natalie Tortoricci and Taylor Rees on base for the Storm, Victoria Watt (3-for-4) and Paige Allen followed with run-scoring singles.
But then South Elgin senior Sam Bolin (8-11) walked Bartlett’s first two batters of the third inning, Taormina and Kaylyn Zierke, Alek Morales (2-for-3) followed with an RBI single and Steph Tomazin’s double cleared the bases and gave the Hawks a 5-3 lead.
South Elgin closed to within 5-4 on a solo home run by Rees in the top of the fourth but Montbriand shut down the Storm after that. Bartlett added an unearned insurance run in the sixth. Montbriand reached on a 2-base infield error and scored on Sydney Johnson’s single.
“We took advantage of mistakes more than they did,” said Wolfsmith. “We were really aggressive on the bases. We got to second without a throw twice and scored both times. We were able to put some pressure on the defense. We’re not going to come out and hit two or three home runs. We make contact, we put pressure on the defense and we make smart plays.”
South Elgin outhit Bartlett 9-7 and Bolin struck out 5 and walked 2, but the Storm’s Achilles’ heel all season — defense — was again their bugaboo. And, they left 8 runners on base.
“You commit that many errors in a game like that, you lose,” said Storm coach Jason Schaal. “I was proud of the way we came out on offense. We got runners on and we moved runners over. But we broke down defensively today.”
Allen added 2 hits, Mallory Mecklenburg had a triple and Alyssa Buddle was 2-for-2 with a double for South Elgin.
“The loss stings,” said Schaal, whose team is the No. 11 seed in the Class 4A Barrington sectional and will open regional play May 23 against Lake Zurich. “We’ve been playing better softball the last two weeks. We’ve improved. And we’re going to try to improve again next week and then take all that improvement into the Lake Zurich game.”