Barrington gets tough at Fremd

When the going got tough, the Barrington softball team got going.

Trailing 2-1 going into their last at bat at Fremd, the Fillies began the top of the seventh with three straight line drives to the outfield.

Barrington parlayed them into 2 runs and that was enough for sophomore Keenan Dolezal to register a 3-2 victory in a hard-fought battle with Fremd senior ace Ashlynne Schwantz (5-3).

Barrington, which had half of its 6 hits in the final inning, improved to 15-1 and 5-0 in the Mid-Suburban West. Fremd stands at 6-6 and 1-1.

Fillies catcher Raegan Fingerman started the winning rally with single to center and Morgan Olszewski followed with a double to left center.

Junior Katie Dehnert then tied the game with her single to center that drove home courtesy runner Jenna Privatsky. The ball was hit so hard that pinch runner Alexa Rebecca had to remain at second.

She got to third on shortstop Erin Ward’s sacrifice bunt and scored on Sam Rosenfeld’s grounder to first.

“I was really just trying to do this for my team,” said Dehnert of her clutch single which tied the game at 2-2. “We wanted to keep our record perfect in the conference and I was just pulling for my teammates the whole game.”

The Fillies had trailed most of the game until Rosenfeld’s game-winning RBI.

Fremd jumped ahead 1-0 in the bottom of the second when catcher Kristine Herdegen reached on an infield error.

Tracy Welninski’s sacrifice bunt advanced pinch runner Emily Bieda to second base. Bieda came went to third on a groundout to third and came home on a wild pitch.

Senior Morgan Brauer followed with a single but Dolezal (10-1) got the next batter on a liner to third baseman Loren Krzysko.

The Vikings went ahead 2-0 in the third.

Leigh Farina singled to center, took second on a wild pitch, third on a walk and scored on Welninski’s bloop to left field which ended up as a force out at third base.

“I thought we played well,” said Fremd coach Jim Weaver. “I thought our at-bats were excellent. I can only think of one or two that got away.”

Julie Josten had 2 hits for the Vikings while teammate Mandi Matsumoto had a two-out bunt single in the fourth inning.

“I thought we played good defense, too” Weaver said. “But we’ve still got improvements to make. I liked how the kids were always in the game, cheering each other on and playing to win. That’s the first step and they did that. Now we’ve got to learn to close it out.”

Barrington cut the deficit to 2-1 in the top of the fourth when Krzysko doubled down the left field line with one out to score Tess Bolger (led off inning with a walk).

The Fillies dropped their only game of the season on Saturday night, 3-2, in 15 innings to Marengo, which was the Class 3A state runner-up last year.

“Especially after Saturday night, this game showed us that we can fight right through to the end,” said Fillies cleanup hitter Maggie O’Hara. “Even when we were behind, we all knew we could do it. We knew every girl had to step up.”

Barrington had hits from six different players.

“We were able to bunch together those 3 hits in the last inning,” said Barrington coach Perry Peterson. “And that was the difference in the game.”