Babe Ruth U14 softball splits in tourney opener

LYNN? While the Lynn Lightning U14 Babe Ruth Softball team was able to finish up Friday’s double-header at Grace Rogato Field with a 1-1 record, the second contest surely left the team with a sour taste in its mouth.. After winning the opener 3-0 over Litchfield-Londonderry (N.H.), the host team was buried 17-0 in game two against a finely-tuned Cheshire, Conn. team.Lets get to the good news first. In game one, Lynn played a pretty much flawless game, getting solid performances on offense, defense and the mound.Courtney Braswell lead the way with the bat, going 2-for-3 with two runs batted in. Mikayla Hamill scored twice for the Lightning while Shannon Magner chipped in with an RBI sacrifice fly.In what Lynn manager Paul DeJoie called a “totally clean game,” the Lightning committed no errors while Ivy Martin did her thing on the mound. In a complete game effort, Martin scattered three hits while fanning six.”She didn’t strike out many batters, but instead forced them to put the ball in play,” said DeJoie of his starter’s performance. “Game one was a solid and complete team effort.”The same, unfortunately, couldn’t be said of game two as the visitors took it to the Lightning from the outset. After scoring a run on a wild pitch from Hamill in the first, the Cheshire offense exploded for a 10-run third inning on four hits and two errors.Things continued to go poorly once Hamill was removed, as Cheshire pounced on reliever Megan Geaney for another four runs in the fourth and two more in the fifth.The only highlight was a single from Ally Dunnigan in the bottom of the fifth, which proved to be Lynn’s only hit of the game. Martin nearly missed a would-be-double to lead off the second, but the ball was ruled foul down the right field line.The only other base runners for the Lightning were Brandy Seguer, who walked in the third before advancing to second on a pick-off attempt, and Martin, who reached on an error at shortstop.In total, the Lightning struck out 10 times, while never advancing past second base. Although unhappy with the performance, DeJoie knows that his team had run into a buzz saw and while Cheshire deserved to win, his squad made things a lot harder on itself.”I think that Cheshire team and program is just unbelievable. You can tell they have been playing together for quite some time,” DeJoie said. “Their pitching was the best we’ve seen in a while and they could hit top to bottom. We had a few bad innings and made some mental errors and those errors tend to get magnified in a game like this.”Despite the rout, DeJoie remains confident in his team’s abilities and expects a much stronger showing tomorrow morning against Pittsfield, (9).”We could have played our best game today and still lost to a team like that, but these kids are resilient. They’ll come back and fight hard so we should have a chance to extend our tournament a bit longer,” he said.