Softball: St. Charles East rolls past Batavia

Paige Ligocki saw a pitch to her liking Tuesday afternoon in St. Charles.

The sophomore sent the mistake from the Batavia pitcher well over the fence in dead center.

"I was just trying to light it up to get a good hit and keep the score going," Ligocki said.

Ligocki fell a triple short of the cycle as the Saints' Madelyn Candre singled home Sarah Kreiner with one out in the bottom of the fifth inning.

The end result was a truncated 13-3 victory for the Saints against Batavia in Upstate Eight Conference River Division softball action.

The Saints (20-4, 9-2) pounded out 18 hits in 4⅓ innings.

"I knew they were going to hit hard," Batavia coach Lupe Castellanos. "I have been following them in the newspaper. I believe they had 16 home runs in one week."

"That's old news," St. Charles East coach Jarod Gutesha said after confirming the home-run barrage earlier this season.

Batavia (11-10, 5-4) actually scored twice in its half of the first to take the lead.

"We could have panicked or pressed but didn't do any of that," Gutesha said.

Nineteen St. Charles East batters went to the plate in the first two innings alone. Nine of them scored as the Bulldogs' fateful 7 runs surrendered in the second began with Allison Masulis drawing a walk and Hannah Cozzi reaching on a throwing error off a sacrifice bunt.

"You can't give up free passes with the hitters they have here," Castellanos said.

Winning pitcher Delaney Devor had the first of back-to-back doubles to score Cozzi in the second.

But the real damage for Batavia came when Kreiner and Masulis authored back-to-back 2-run singles.

"The second inning, that was just two-out hit after two-out hit after two-out hit," Gutesha said. "They weren't cheap hits. It was a very good piece of hitting by all the girls today."

Staked to a 9-2 lead after the second inning, Devor had few issues in improving to 12-4 on the year.

"The hitting was awesome," Devor said. "It's definitely easier (to pitch with such run support). It definitely took off some pressure. I got to mix it up a little bit more."

The Saints were virtually living at the gap as the team had 5 doubles to augment the tape-measure home run Ligocki clubbed to give St. Charles East an 11-2 third-inning lead.

Kreiner and Candre had run-scoring singles to invoke the slaughter rule for St. Charles East in the fifth inning.

Allison Bahlmann had a pair of RBI singles for the Bulldogs; Kaylan Waldron opened the scoring with a two-out single in the Batavia first.