LYNN — It wasn’t hard to tell, at first glance, who won Monday’s Classical-English softball game.
“I’m not very happy at all,” said English coach Alisa Fila after the Rams pasted the Bulldogs, 10-2, at Breed. “I really thought we’d give them a better game than we did.”
On the other side: “I thought defensively we were outstanding,” said Classical’s Chris Warren, whose Rams celebrated the return of all-star centerfielder Danielle Moran to the lineup by playing airtight defense and getting timely hitting en route to the win. She made a nice defensive play in the top of the third inning with one out and two on, ranging deep into center to catch a line drive by Keri Bryson.
“At the time,” said Warren, “it was a crucial catch. It was so nice to see her out there. She gives everyone confidence.
“We played a great game defensively,” he said, “and I thought (Ivy) Martin pitched well too.”
This was the first of two scheduled games between Lynn’s intra-city rivals (there could possibly be a third in May when the John Holland Tournament is played) and it began as if it would be a tight ballgame.
Both Molly Cullen of English and Martin were on. Both teams had chances early, but the Rams broke through in the bottom of the third ”¦ thanks to two costly English errors. Angela Erelli was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning (both she and Olivia DeJoie were plunked twice) and, after Franki Galeazzi struck out, Sammy Earp hit a popup behind the pitcher that was dropped. Both she and Erelli moved up on a wild pitch. After Moran walked, DeJoie hit a grounder to the pitcher that scored one run. Martin then hit a fly ball to right that was dropped, allowing two more runs to come across.
“We can’t expect to win games if we’re going to make errors like that,” said Fila. “We can’t be doing that. We can’t be making these mistakes.”
The Rams got another run in the fourth when, with one out, Erelli singled, took second on a wild pitch and went to third on Galeazzi’s bunt single, and came home on a passed ball.
English finally got to Martin in the fifth, scoring runs on an RBI single by Shanna Zeramby and a ground ball to short by Sam Holey. But Classical put up six runs in the bottom of the fifth to ice the game.
In so doing, the Rams sent 11 batters to the plate. Once again, English plunked both Erelli and DeJoie to put two runners on base, and, to go along with two walks and two errors, the Rams needed only three hits to score the runs. One of them was a two-run single by Moran.
“We got a lot of freebies in terms of walks and hit batsmen,” acknowledged Warren, “and when you get that many, you should score runs.”
“They (Classical) did a nice job,” said Fila. “They made the plays you have to make in order to win games.”
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
