Softball: Hoffman Estates falls short at Fenton

Fenton's 16-year softball coach Dave Mello, who doubles as the school's head girls basketball coach, says his players just want to learn and get better this spring.

"Although we are very inexperienced at the varsity level, it's a great group of girls," he said.

A group that helped Fenton to a great start on its home field on Thursday with a 10-0 victory over Hoffman Estates.

It is also a group that includes 11 basketball players, of which five (all in the infield) were on Mello's varsity team this winter.

One of them is senior second baseman Giselle Sabaria, the only player (2-for-4) in the game with multiple hits.

On the mound, sophomore Nicole Staszel made her first varsity start, throwing a 1-hit shutout for Fenton (2-2) which won its second straight game and second straight home opener.

"That's amazing," said Sabaria, who would like to play softball and study biology in college. "It was a great way to start our home schedule and honestly we're just going to keep getting better each day."

Sabaria also made two nice defensive plays in the first inning, including a backhand stop for the second out.

In her first at-bat, Sabaria belted a line drive down the left-field line to lead off the Bison 6-run second inning. Due to obstruction at first base, she was only credited with a single despite making it all the way home due to an error.

In her last at-bat in the sixth, Sabaria singled sharply up the middle with two outs and the bases loaded, scoring 2 runs which ended the game by the 10-run rule.

"Giselle is a senior and a very heads-up player," Mello said. "She knew she could keep racing to second because she had the obstruction call. And (when the error was made) she never broke stride. After we got that big inning (6 runs in the second), I kept waiting to push it to 10 runs because you never know what can happen. And Giselle came through with that nice shot to get it to 10."

Also coming through with hits for Fenton were senior leadoff batter Kaitlyn Hoffing (home run), Izzy Delgado (double to right field), Natalie Staszel (2-run triple to center), Kayla Valadez (infield single) and Keira McGowan (infield single).

The only hit for Hoffman Estates (0-4) was a one-out double down the left line by Bella Valazquez in the top of the second.

After a two-out walk to Riley Foszcz, Nicole Staszel got out of the inning with a pop out to shortstop Hoffing, who came back in the bottom of the inning with her first homer of the season. The all-conference point guard lined the ball to left field for an inside-the-park 2-run homer that scored McGowan.

Hoffing was robbed of a second hit when Hawks shortstop Maddie Dyer made a nice grab of a sharp line drive.

"Kaitlyn (who has been a slap hitter) was all-state last year," Mello said. "We found out (her power) by mistake one day in the dome when we had some extra time. She took a righty at-bat and almost hit it out so now she switches. It's up to her. She can easily play in college. It's just a matter of what she decides to do."

For Nicole Stazsel, it was just a matter of picking up the slack for Kendall Mitchell who was unavailable on Thursday.

"We told Nicole it was a tough situation without Kendall, who has been starting our games," Mello said. "Nicole just took the ball and our hope was three innings from her and she doubles it with six. She threw strikes. I know she had a few walks but she did settle in and never put herself in trouble with multiple walks in an inning. So for a first varsity start as a sophomore, that was a phenomenal effort. I'm very proud of her and very happy that her teammates had her back in the field (only 1 error)."

Hoffman Estates coach Lindsey Hamma, who was celebrating her birthday on Thursday, is looking forward to the Hawks' home opener on Friday against Hampshire.

"Bella (Velazquez) has kind of been our No. 1 (pitcher) so it was nice to give Kendall (Burdick) the opportunity to throw the whole game," said Hamma, a guard on Buffalo Grove's 2000 Class 4A girls basketball state championship team. "She challenged all the hitters and unfortunately we had some errors behind her. It's really a different game had we caught some of those pop-ups early. But late in the game I was really happy with how we were playing. I think we'll learn a lot from things today and have a good outing (Friday) against Hampshire.

"I think we kind of ran ourselves off the bases early when we could have gotten momentum on our side and they just capitalized on our mistakes and kept after it. They were making us make plays and unfortunately we did not get the timely hits."