Genoa-Kingston denies St. Edward regional crown

GENOA — Genoa-Kingston softball coach Mike Lauer wanted to make sure his team didn’t pound groundballs in Kali Kossakowski’s direction Saturday.

The Cogs didn’t.

Instead G-K hit only one grounder to St. Edward’s junior shortstop, who had a hand in 9 outs during St. Edward’s Class 2A regional semifinal win over Regina Dominican Wednesday. The rest of the time, the Cogs were spraying the ball to all fields, delivering a 10-1 decision over the Green Wave for the regional championship. While denying St. Edward back-to-back regional titles Genoa, which went into the postseason last year 25-1 only to be upset in the regional finals, won its first regional since 2008. The Cogs (19-12) will play North Boone in Wednesday’s semifinal at the G-K sectional.

“St. Ed’s shortstop is such a nice player, if you pull a lot of balls to her you never know,” said Lauer.

But Lauer knew going into Saturday’s game his top-seeded team stood a pretty good chance against No. 2 St. Edward no matter where they hit the ball. The Cogs beat the Green Wave 13-0 on April 14 in the championship game of St. Edward’s Chicagoland Challenge.

“You felt pretty good about it coming in but you never know, it’s a regional championship game,” Lauer said. “We talked about getting an early lead and Danielle (Engel) threw the ball well. She had good pop today.”

Engel, Genoa’s junior right-hander, allowed St. Edward just 2 hits — singles by Kossakowski and freshman Ryann Scully. She struck out 8 and walked 1 and hit an inside-the park home run on the 215-foot field. The Cogs had 15 hits off St. Edward senior Morgin Coughlin and sophomore Julie Larson. Coughlin had to be taken out of the game with one out in the third inning after being called for 7 illegal pitches.

“The umpire said the IHSA is cracking down on (illegal pitches) but she got called for two all season, then 11 (in the regional semifinal) and seven today,” said St. Edward coach Jaci Corn. “That was frustrating. Tack onto it that we didn’t play defense and we didn’t hit and things just weren’t going our way.”

Genoa scored in every inning but the sixth, racking up a 7-0 lead by the end of the third. St. Edward had 4 errors.

St. Edward (10-20) avoided the shutout and the slaughter rule with a run in the fourth. Kossakowski singled, went to second on a wild pitch and scored when Genoa made an error on Jasmine Deleon’s bunt.

“I give our girls credit,” Corn said. “They could have thrown their hands up and let Genoa score one more but they didn’t. But the hits just weren’t there. (Engel) is a good pitcher and we were going after her riseball.”