Lisle comes back to defeat St. Edward

For a few brief moments it looked St. Edward might finally end Lisle’s softball dominance over the Green Wave.

It turned out the Lions weren’t ready for the end.

A Kellie Brennan sixth-inning double drove in 3 runs to give the Lions a 3-1 victory and a Class 2A sectional championship at Benedictine University in Lisle on Saturday morning.

“I was pretty nervous,” Brennan said. “I was feeling kind of down, but I knew we could come back.”

St. Edward scored first, getting a run across in the top of the sixth inning when courtesy runner Darcy Gaige, on for catcher Tarah McShane, scored from third base on a passed ball.

“We all believed that we were going to win this game,” said McShane, a Driscoll transfer whose double put Gaige at second to run for her. “It’s hard because till the end we never gave up. It was a tough loss, but it was a great game.”

The Green Wave (18-10) thought it had Lisle (27-4) where it wanted the Lions. But in the bottom of the inning Melanie Early walked and MacKenzie Buchelt singled. Grace Riley dropped a sacrifice bunt and reached safely when the throw went to third, just missing Early.

On the first pitch Brennan came through with a bases-loaded double, and St. Edward’s lead vanished almost as quickly as it arrived.

“It wasn’t a missed pitch or anything, she just hit the ball, and unfortunately it went where we weren’t,” McShane said of Brennan’s double. “There was nothing we could do except fight to the end.”

The Lions knew they weren’t out of the game, though.

“We knew we were going to have to score to win, so I just told the girls, be patient,” Lisle coach Jen Pomatto said. “We’d been been hitting her hard, we’d been putting people on base. We faced her earlier in the year. We knew what she could throw. We know if we work the count we’ll be able to put the ball in play.”

Lisle has knocked St. Edward out of the postseason three consecutive seasons and also defeated the Green Wave earlier in the regular season.

“Third year,” first-year Green Wave coach Jaci Corn said. “But last two we didn’t score a run, and it was 8-0 and 10-0. This was a 3-1 ballgame, and we looked like we deserved to be here.”

“We knew that we had to go in playing because they were a good team,” Green Wave pitcher Sarah Field said. “We know they’re a good team, and we’ve improved so much from the beginning of the year and we knew that it would be a good game. We knew this would be a close game and it wasn’t going to be a high-scoring game whatsoever.”

St. Edward rebounded from an 0-6 start to the season to go 18-4 in its last 22 games.

Lisle moves on to Tuesday’s Seneca supersectional against either Seneca or Momence.

“I’m really excited,” Brennan said. “This is my first time on varsity, so it’s my first time at the supersectional.”

Lisle pitcher Bekka Houda ran her record to 20-2, striking out six.