St. Edward moves on to regional title game
GENOA — St. Edward senior Morgin Coughlin wasn’t about to let a couple of illegal pitch calls bother her.
Well, it was actually more than a couple. Coughlin fought off 11 illegal pitch calls — but only one with a runner on base — and the Green Wave pounded out 10 hits in an 8-3 win over Regina Dominican Wednesday in the semifinals of the Class 2A Genoa-Kingston regional.
The second-seeded Green Wave (10-19) will take on No. 1 seed Genoa (18-12) at 11 a.m. Saturday for the regional championship. St. Edward is seeking its second straight regional title and fourth in the last five years. G-K beat the Green Wave 13-0 in the April 14 championship game of St. Edward’s Chicagoland Challenge tournament.
“Don’t worry about it and don’t let it affect me,” said Coughlin when asked how she battled through the illegal pitch calls, which began with the second pitch of the game. “This was a group effort today for sure. We made sure we were loud the whole game. We knew we had this game. We just had to come out and play solid defense and hit the ball.”
The Wave did both. St. Edward took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the third inning. Coughlin led off with a double, junior Kali Kossakowski drew a one-out walk, Ashley Gradisher (2-for-4) beat out a bunt and Jasmine Deleon drove home 2 runs with a bloop single to left field.
Regina (11-20) came back and tied it in the top of the fourth, using St. Edward’s one bad defensive inning of the day — 3 errors — to pave the way.
The Panthers returned the favor in the bottom of the inning, but St. Edward also had 3 hits and when the dust settled the Wave had scored 5 runs to take a 7-2 lead. Sophomore Julie Larson reached on an error to open the inning and freshman Ryann Scully (3-for-3) followed with a double. Larson then scored on a wile pitch and Kristi Kroll walked. With runners at first and third, a throwing error on Kroll’s steal attempt allowed Scully to score. Kroll then came home on Kelly Theriault’s RBI single and Kossakowski laced a triple to the right-field corner to score Theriault. Kossakowski scored the fifth run of the inning on a two-out infield error.
“We just didn’t play under control,” said Regina coach Jim Goranson. “This wasn’t indicative of how we’ve been playing lately. We haven’t had a game like this in a while. I’m proud of where they’ve come from. We started out 0-12 and went 11-8 since. Hopefully all the game experience will pay off next year.”
With the lead, Coughlin (7-14) shut Regina down the rest of the way, allowing just a seventh-inning run after St. Edward had made it an 8-2 game in the sixth on Maddie Kerr’s RBI groundout that scored Gradisher. The game ended on a nifty backhanded stop and throw to first from short by Kossakowski, who had 6 assists and 3 putouts.
“Morgin was hitting her spots and she didn’t let (the illegal pitches) get to her,” said St. Edward coach Jaci Corn, whose team won its third game in a row for the first time this season. “She was mentally tough the whole game..
“Some games we hit and some games we don’t. We just wanted to make sure we brought it all seven innings today. We had to be aggressive with what they gave us and that’s what we did.”
Now a taller task is at hand against the host Cogs on Saturday.
“We hit the ball we just made too many errors,” said Corn of the first meeting with G-K, when St. Edward had 7 hits but made 8 errors. “The errors got to us that game, both the physical and mental errors. Our next two practices will be getting them mentally prepared and hopefully we can come out here and take this thing.”