By James A. McCray III
DigitalSports, Content Manager
Come into a Washington Catholic Athletic Conference softball game at 11-0 in league play; decent.
Score four runs in the second inning to go up 4-0 en route to your 6-0 victory; valuable.
Take over first place on top of the WCAC softball standings and improve to 12-0; priceless.
The Bishop O’Connell Lady Knights softball team did just that on Friday afternoon with its victory over the hosting St. Mary Ryken Lady Knights.
Led by a complete-game, four-hit performance from starting pitcher Jilly Falle, the O’Connell Knights earned sole possession of first place.
“We just came off of a loss against a public-school team, Westfield,” Falle explained, “so coming here, I think it improved my focus.”
Falle struck out nine batters in her winning effort, and also helped herself from the plate with a RBI single in the top half of the second inning in which O’Connell scored four runs.
Allison Grasmeder got the scoring going with a RBI double putting O’Connell up 1-0. After Falle’s RBI, Jessica Burk plated a run on the second RBI double of the frame, and an error allowed the fourth run of the inning to score.
With four quick runs to start the game, O’Connell head coach Tommy Orndorff was happy with the fast start.
“I was pleased,” Orndorff said. “These are the two top teams in the WCAC, or that’s what it looks like right now. … For us to show up and play with the intensity that we did, I was very pleased all the way around.”
O’Connell (14-1 overall) scored two more runs in the top half of the fifth inning thanks to the bat of Maria Jose-Zavala on a two-run, inside-the-park home run to give the Knights the 6-0 lead.
“Yay,” Jose-Zavala said of her home run. “I was just trying to work on what the coach’s are telling me. They know everything that they are talking about. … I just tried to focus on keeping my elbow up and keeping everything compact.
” … It felt good to hit a home run, especially against Ryken because they have a really good pitcher. She is probably one of the best pitchers we have seen out here.”
Ryken (12-4, 7-2 WCAC) was led in the circle by starting pitcher Katie Delapaz.
Delapaz struck out two batters in her efforts as Ryken head coach Scott Kuhns was pleased with her and the team’s efforts in the contest.
“Great game, great effort,” Kuhns said. “… It was just one bad inning. I don’t know what happened; it just seemed that the balls fell in the holes [for O’Connell].”
On his pitcher’s efforts, Kuhns added: “She was tough. She is going to battle back every time, and she is never going to back down.”
E-mail: James A. McCray III
Bishop O’ Connell 6, St. Mary’s Ryken 0
O’ Connell 0 4 0 0 2 0 0 — 6 10 0
Ryken 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 — 0 4 1
WP: Falle LP: Delapaz
Extra-base hits: 2B: BOC (Grasmeder, Burk) HR: BOC (Jose-Zavala)
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