Wheaton North puts hits together for victory

Wheaton North's many little hits added up more quickly than Glenbard West's one big hit.

The Falcons rode a 5-run fifth inning to a 6-1 victory at Glenbard West in Game 1 of a nonconference softball doubleheader Tuesday in Glen Ellyn. The Falcons also won the second game 5-3.

There was no single offensive hero for the Falcons (5-1), but pitcher Kahla Nolan was strong in the circle. She struck out eight, walked one and allowed only one Hilltopper to reach base through the first five innings.

That one Hilltopper was No. 3 hitter Michele Waggoner, who hit a first-inning 0-2 pitch over the fence in right-center to give Glenbard West a brief 1-0 lead.

"She took an outside pitch to the opposite field," Hilltoppers coach Mary McGrane said. "Michele does a nice job of that, staying on the ball and hitting it right side."

"She made that one mistake on that homer and that was on an 0-2 count and that was something that we were working on," added Falcons coach Karen Calabrese. "... Kahla's first year we gave up way too many home runs when we were ahead in the count, and our goal is to get her to throw her pitches when she's ahead in the count. So needless to say an 0-2 home run right off the bat was a little nerve-wracking. Obviously, she came back and did a great job."

The Hilltoppers got two runners on base in the seventh inning, but Nolan got her final strikeout to end the game.

"I felt really good," Nolan said. "I had a good warmup. All my pitches were working. I didn't hit my spot on that one pitch where I gave up the home run, of course, but everything fell into place."

It helped that Nolan didn't dwell on the homer.

"You can't really," the junior said. "If you do you get rattled and then things start going downhill, which I've experienced before. I just shook it off."

The Hilltoppers couldn't shake off a tough fifth inning that saw the Falcons make good on four singles, a walk and a sacrifice fly while taking advantage of 3 Glenbard West errors.

"Thank goodness, because I thought we had a couple of opportunities earlier that we kind of let go, so I was hoping that we could string an inning together," Calabrese said. "They did a nice job of making something happen. That dropped foul ball helped us out a little bit, so I'm glad that they took advantage of the mistakes, because you've got to do that against the better teams."

"That was kind of a killer, wasn't it?" McGrane asked rhetorically. "We just mentally shut down that inning, it felt like. We made a lot of mental mistakes that fifth inning."

That's the kind of inning teams need to learn from early in the season.

"We've got to become smarter ballplayers, and I think that's a prime example of what can happen when we're not thinking and not anticipating what we should be doing," McGrane said. "I told the girls this is the time to let mistakes happen and let's learn from them."