By Dean Geddes
I&M Sports Editor
The girls varsity softball team earned its first victory of the season on Tuesday, a 27-11 rout of Southeastern Regional Voke, after losing the first two games of the season against Bristol-Plymouth and Diman earlier in the week.
The Whalers (1-2) were without their star pitcher, Kelsey Fredericks, and started Grace-Anne Tornovish on the mound for the game against Southeastern, but Nantucket more than made up for Fredericks’ absence with a huge day at the plate.
Molly Lentowski went 2-for-3 with two walks and drove in five runs. Alex Devendorf was 4-for-5 and knocked in four runs. Cassie Moran and Stephanie Norris each had a pair of RBIs in the game.
Tornovish had control problems and left after pitching two innings and the Whalers trailing 9-7. Jessica Guevara came in and provided immediate relief, retiring the Southeastern hitters in order in the bottom of the third inning.
With Guevara minimizing the damage, the Whaler bats went to work, scoring twenty runs in the next two innings. The referees invoked the 15-run “mercy-rule” at the end of five and a half, ending the game and awarding Nantucket the 27-11 victory.
Pitchers’ duel
On Monday afternoon’s home-opener, Fredericks and Diman’s Jessica Scores were putting away batters at a blistering pace. After four innings Fredericks had not allowed a base-runner and Scores allowed a lone double in the first inning, but had been perfect since. In the fifth inning, both teams would put runners in scoring position, but Diman’s ability to knock in three two-out runs, was the difference in the game.
Amanda Carpenter was the first Diman batter to reach base safely when she hit a fly-ball into the outfield that dropped for a two-base error.
“Defensively, we kind of lost our focus in the fifth inning. Whenever you’re playing close games, if you allow the other team extra outs, it’s going to get you in trouble,” head coach Chris Maury said.
Diman bunted the runner over to third, and another sacrifice bunt rolled down the first base line and Alex Devendorf snagged the ground ball but missed the tag on the base-runner. The runner on third remained on base.
After a groundout back to Fredericks on the mound, Diman had runners on second and third with two outs, when Kyle Ovellette laced a single back up the middle that scored the first two runs of the game. Diman added another run before the inning was over, on an infield single.
Trailing 3-0, the Whalers’ offense looked to answer as Lentowski led off the home half of the fifth inning with a single up the middle. Cassie Moran and Lauren Fry were the next two batters in the inning, and both worked walks on full counts after fouling off a handful of two-strike pitches.
With the bases loaded and nobody out, the Whalers let a golden scoring opportunity pass by as the next three batters were retired on a pair of strikeouts and harmless infield fly.
In the top of the seventh inning, Diman looked to add to its three-run lead with runners on first and third and two outs, put Fredericks was able to avoid any further damage as Gabrielle LeChance flied out to right field.
“(Scores) is a good pitcher. This game is all about winning that battle between pitcher and hitter. We swung at a lot of bad pitches, and took a lot of good pitches. We just need to focus at the top of our order. The bottom of our lineup was getting on base, and the top of the lineup couldn’t come through for us. It’s not what you would expect,” Maury said.
It was do or die for the Whalers in the bottom of the seventh, and again the inning started with a leadoff single from Lentowski, and after a strikeout, Fry roped a hard ground ball on the third base side and then Stephanie Norris worked a walk to load the bases with one out.
But Nantucket again could not convert with runners on base as Tornovish fouled out to third base and Aislinn Dugan struck out to end the game.
Tough loss
Thursday’s 2-1 road loss to Bristol-Plymouth Voke was a mirror image of the Diman game as Fredericks was locked into a pitchers’ duel early in the contest, but a defensive lapse in the fourth inning would again cost the Whalers the game.
Freshman Jessica Guevara reached on an error in the top of the second, and advanced to second base on a wild pitch. Fredericks, helped her own cause, smashed an RBI double into the outfield to give the Whalers a 1-0 lead.
After Fredericks retired the Bristol-Plymouth lineup in order the first time around, they managed to score a pair of unearned runs on three singles and an error. The Whalers had a chance to get Fredericks out of the inning by doubling up a base-runner at first, but an errant throw kept the inning alive for Bristol-Plymouth and they made the most of it.
Despite putting runners on base in the later innings, Nantucket was unable to get the clutch hit to score the game-tying run and suffered the 2-1 loss in their first game of the season.
Reach Dean Geddes at sports@inkym.com
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