LYNN — The St. Mary’s softball team had a lot of live up to after its incredible season-opening win late last week, and the Spartans continued their blazing-hot start over the weekend with a 5-1 victory over Archbishop Williams in a Catholic Central League bout at Breed Middle School on Saturday.
“It was another nice win for us,” said St. Mary’s coach Frank Pagliuca, who has now won his first two games at the helm. “We got a great pitching performance, and then on offense we were able to run the bases incredibly well and take advantage of some errors, which was huge since we only had six hits. It was a great team win.”
Lily Newhall was once again the star in the pitcher’s circle for the Spartans, tossing a complete game and striking out 15 batters.
“Lily has just come out of the gates firing on all cylinders, and it’s been great to watch,” said Pagliuca. “Her strength and command of the strike zone have been so impressive in the first couple of games, and she seems like she’s really improved all parts of her game. She’s spotting the ball well, commanding the strike zone and really throwing all her pitches well.”
On the offensive side of things, Alyssa Grossi and Marina DiBiasio each had one RBI in the victory.
“This was really more of a game where we manufactured our runs, which was great to see,” said Pagliuca. “You’re not going to get a ton of hits in every game, so to be able to bunt well, move runners around and take advantage of errors will be huge moving forward.”
St. Mary’s didn’t waste any time getting out to a lead in this one, scoring in the bottom of the first. Grossi got things going with a single, then DiBiasio came up with a big RBI triple to make it 1-0 Spartans.
The score remained the second inning, when a pair of heads-up baserunning plays by the Spartans pushed the lead to 3-0. In the bottom of the fifth, Grossi added a RBI of her own to help stretch the lead to 5-0 before Williams notched a run late in the game to round out the scoring.
St. Mary’s (2-0) travels to Beverly Monday afternoon (4). It’s the beginning of a busy week of four games, with one CCL matchup (Austin Prep on Saturday) and three non-conference matchups (Beverly on Monday, Gloucester on Tuesday and Masconomet on Thursday).
“We have a lot of games coming up on the schedule and it’s incredibly exciting,” said Pagliuca. “We’re very fortunate to have the support of the Catholic Central League in allowing us to be flexible and schedule out-of-conference games, because at the end of the day it’s about giving these kids as many opportunities to play as possible. We’re excited to hopefully get in a full schedule with a number of different opponents.”
