A grand day for Lancers' Ciezki

Lake Park softball coach Cray Allen said Lynsey Ciezki "looked like she won the lottery" after hitting her first career home run last week against St. Charles North.

She really hit it big Tuesday.

Lake Park's senior leadoff hitter slugged a grand slam in a 5-run fifth inning in the Lancers' 10-3 win over Larkin in Roselle.

"It felt awesome," Ciezki said. "Bases loaded, I just wanted to get a gap shot, but it just kept flying."

Ciezki, a slap-hitting table setter for much of her first three years at Lake Park, is much more than that now.

"This past summer I actually hit for power," said the DePaul-bound shortstop. "Every day I work with my hitting coach. We've been lifting a lot lately."

Ciezki tripled off the base of the fence in right to lead off the bottom of the first and scored on Carly Willert's groundout.

With two outs and the bases juiced in the fifth, Ciezki crushed the first pitch she saw deep out over the fence in right to make it 10-3.

"Her first three years, being so little, a lot of people kind of moved in on her in the outfield. Now obviously you can't do that," Allen said. "Their outfield was playing short today. She's more than welcome to hit the ball hard."

Lake Park earlier tallied 2 runs each in the second and fourth innings. Both rallies were keyed by Jamie Pomahac pop flies that dropped just beyond the infield. Kaitlyn Tunzi laid down a perfect bunt single in the second inning and slapped an infield single in the fourth.

"They have many ways to hurt you," Larkin coach Larry Hight said. "I felt if we would have caught our popups like we should have this game would have been close. We have a very inexperienced varsity team. It showed today."

Mel Montemayor went 2-for-3 and scored 2 runs, and Pomahac scored 3 runs for Lake Park (6-0, 5-0 Upstate Eight Conference).

Larkin (2-7, 2-3) scored twice in the top of the fifth, Victoria Nino singling in Ellis Hatchett and Corinne Wimmer scoring on a wild pitch.

A day after pitching in a JV game, Angie Bates (1-0) got the win in her first varsity start of the year.

Bates allowed 5 hits and 3 walks and struck out six.

"She's got a new catcher calling for her and a new coach calling pitches for her," Allen said, "and we're not on the same page. Once she got comfortable with what she was throwing you saw the last three innings she was a lot better."