St. Charles N. clinches UEC River
With a 6-0 victory over St. Charles East Tuesday, St. Charles North’s softball team clinched the Upstate Eight Conference River Division championship.
And in other news, the sun will rise in the East tomorrow, gas prices are still way too high, and spring weather in Illinois stinks.
OK, so it might not come as a surprise that the North Stars are conference champs for the third straight year, but it is nonetheless an impressive accomplishment.
St. Charles North seniors Amanda Ciran, Taylor Russell, Sydney Russell, Loren Cihlar and Natalie Capone have been playing varsity softball since they were freshmen. They took second behind Lake Park that year, then started their conference title streak as sophomores when they added classmates Annie Korth, Ashley Seering, Emily Watts, Caitlyn Khoury and JuliaClare Plezbert to varsity.
This group has bigger goals which start next week with postseason play, but they also can take pride in a dominating stretch of conference success. Only a loss to Geneva this year stands between the North Stars (22-2, 16-1) and a perfect conference record.
“All 4 years we’ve wanted to push getting the conference title,” Ciran said. “This is one of the steps getting to our main goal (state). It was such a bad ending last year (losing to York in the regional opener), we wanted to make this step again but then start moving on. This (conference title) was only a building block but we are still exited about it, especially beating East. It’s an awesome feeling.”
The Saints (15-14, 9-8), coming off a 13-run explosion Monday against Batavia, had no such luck against Ciran.
Ciran (16-1) scattered 5 hits, walked just one and fanned seven, many with her trademark changeup.
“Her change made us look silly in there,” Saints coach Kelly Horan said.
“I don’t like to give them anything on an 0-2 pitch,” Ciran said. “I’m thinking maybe they’ll chase it because they are anxious. Even if they look at it it’s only one ball.”
The North Stars didn’t hit Saints starter Shannon Pedersen that hard. They didn’t have any extra-base hits and only had 2 runs through 5 innings.
That’s OK with coach Tom Poulin who was glad to see his team use small ball. It started in the first when Cihlar reached on an infield single and scored on Taylor Russell’s sacrifice fly.
The North Stars took a 2-0 lead in the third when Sabrina Rabin was hit by a pitch, moved to third on two infield outs and scored on Russell’s single.
“We did a lot of things you are going to need to do to have success in the tournament,” Poulin said. “We moved them around. You aren’t going to go out in the big games in the tournament and knock triples and knock the ball out of the park. You are going to have to play some small ball to beat good teams. We’re getting better at that.”
After playing a pretty clean game through five innings, the Saints made 2 throwing errors that contributed to the North Stars’ 4-run sixth. Korth and Rabin singled in runs and Watts brought in another with a groundout.
No player on the Saints had more than 1 hit. Korth had the only 2-hit day for North.
“We have to correct our offensive attack and we have to play a little bit better defense behind our pitcher,” Horan said.
The North Stars played their fourth game without second baseman Sydney Russell, who injured her ankle May 7 against Geneva. Poulin had said last week that he hoped to have her back for this game. Now he would like to see Russell return possibly against Lockport Saturday at the Stone City Jamboree.
“We’re just being safe,” said Poulin, adding that Russell practiced Monday but wasn’t 100 percent.
“She was begging to play. I’m probably not on her list of favorite people right now. You have to be smart. We need her healthy next week. She’s a stud and you need to have her healthy.”