Burlington Central comes back to beat W. Aurora
Burlington Central's softball team finally figured it out.
After falling behind West Aurora, the Rockets scored 7 times in the fifth inning to record the 10-6 come-from-behind win in nonconference action on Rocket Hill Saturday morning.
Tori Harvey's 2-run single in the fifth put the Rockets ahead and Brooke Gaylord pitched 3 innings of scoreless relief to record the win.
“I just think we made it hard on ourselves the first couple of innings,” said Central coach Cary Allen. “We had two pop-ups and four strikeouts the first three innings. You're not going to do much with that offense. I knew we were going to hit. I was just hoping the game was going to be long enough for us to finally figure it out.”
With the Rockets (2-2) trailing, 6-3, Angie Morrow started the fifth inning with a single up the middle. The next six Rocket batters then reached base. Sarah Kisch had a run-scoring single in the inning, and the Rockets took advantage of 3 walks and 3 wild pitches.
“There were a lot of bloopers and we had several walks,” said West Aurora coach Sara Nagy of the fifth inning. “It was one of those innings where you can't catch that break. There were those little infield hits, and we had those walks thrown in.”
The Blackhawks (0-2) took the lead with a big inning of their own, scoring 4 times in the fourth. Ally Wayzer and Molly Jordan delivered RBI singles, and West Aurora took advantage of 3 Burlington errors in the inning.
Gaylord took over with one out and two runners on in that inning and shut down the Blackhawks from there.
“I knew I had my defense behind me,” she said. “I could trust them with everything and I trusted my catcher and coaches to call the right pitches for me to be successful.”
What they mostly called were dropballs and outside fastballs. With that combo, Gaylord kept West Aurora off-balance, scattering 3 hits the rest of the way. She struck out 4 and walked none.
The Rockets led 3-2 after three innings, with sacrifice flies by Emily Bell accounting for two of the runs.
But the Rockets needed Harvey's big hit to complete the comeback. She went up just looking to make contact.
“I knew that we just needed to get the ball in play because the bases were loaded,“ she said, “and I wanted to make sure that they scored, even if I got out.”