Softball: Geneva makes it 25 straight wins
Tuesday's 8-0 win at St. Charles North shouldn't have been as easy as the Geneva softball team made it look.
The North Stars, a 15-9 team playing on their home field for the second-to-last time in the regular season, were coming off a confidence-building win at Sandburg on Saturday, followed by Monday's 16-0 Upstate Eight River win over Larkin.
Nevertheless, Geneva (27-2, 16-0) went about completing the 2-game UEC River sweep from the opening at-bat. Left-handed leadoff batter Katie Keller doubled and later scored on Kaitlyn Plocinski's single and the Vikings were off and running with a 3-run rally.
"Coming out with a bang and showing them that we're here to play was a really great way to start the game," Plocinski said.
The Vikings added another run in the fourth inning, blew it open with a 4-run sixth, and junior Ali Dierks pitched her third shutout of the season to extend Geneva's school-record winning streak to 25. The previous record was 14.
"We've been playing real well and our thing is we're not doing anything different," Geneva coach Greg Dierks said. "We're just keeping the same approach game after game and, hopefully, we'll keep this running as far as we can."
Keller, a junior committed to Northern Illinois, finished 4-for-4 with 2 doubles to raise her batting average from .575 to .595 (50-for-84). She scored twice and drove in a pair to lead a 12-hit attack against two St. Charles North pitchers.
"They're a highly respected team in our eyes, definitely, so that was just a great one for us," Keller said. "We beat them (at Geneva), but it was really nice to come out here and show them again who we are and that we can play."
The outcome wasn't what the North Stars had in mind. They were limited to 4 singles and a walk and left 7 runners on base.
"We got beat, really, in just every phase, starting with pregame warmups," St. Charles North coach Tom Poulin said. "Geneva looked more intense, ready to play. They threw the ball better from the circle, they fielded the ball better in the infield and the outfield, they went and made plays, they limited their mistakes and they got us out when we had people in scoring position early. We didn't have quality at-bats.
"As good as they are - and I'm not taking anything away from Geneva; There's a reason they've won as many games as they've won in a row and it's because they're very good - but we feel we're just as good and we're not proving it."
Geneva became a stronger team Tuesday, if possible, thanks to the strong performance of Ali Dierks on the heels of a hand injury that initially forced her to miss more than two weeks. After a couple of recent appearances to test the strained tendon in her pitching hand, she returned to the circle as a starter for the first time in a month and threw a 4-hit shutout with a walk and 2 strikeouts.
"I was ready for this so it was a good start," said Dierks (7-2). "I just stuck to basics, hit my spots as best as I could and tried to change their eyes as much as I could and keep them off balance. It worked out all right."
Kate Geary and Alyssa Kramer each registered 2 hits and Annika Radabaugh and Sam Keller doubled for Geneva.
Ashly Jozefowicz (2-for-3) was responsible for half the North Stars' hits.