Claremont
The Cardinals blanked the Wildcats twice during the regular season, 8-0 and 7-0, but it was a different story as the Wildcats came prepared. They moved the outfielders deep on defense, played some small ball on offense and scared the bejeebers out of the Cardinals before falling, 5-4.
“They hit me a lot better this time around,” said Stevens pitcher Madison Lapsley, who tossed the two previous shutouts. “They came in and gave us a battle.”
But a win is what the fifth-seeded Cardinals (16-2) were looking for, and a win is what they got, sending them to a quarterfinal game in Berlin on Saturday at 4 p.m. The fourth-seeded Mountaineers were 8-1 winners over Prospect Mountain in their first-round game on Wednesday.
Twelfth-seeded Fall Mountain closes out at 8-10.
It perhaps should have not come as a great surprise that the Wildcats put up a strong showing. Down the regular-season stretch, they gave second-seeded Campbell a tough game and lost by only 1-0 to third-seeded Newport.
“They’ve been playing good and were ready for us,” Cardinals shortstop Jenna Pond said.
Added coach Missy Nichols: “I knew this was not going to be easy. They made some adjustments, and pushing their outfielders back took some things away from us.”
While Fall Mountain handled the bats better against Lapsley, the junior pitcher helped herself a lot by handling her position well, earning four assists and allowing just one walk with four strikeouts. The Stevens defense also was solid with just one error. In fact, defense pretty much was the story of the game, as three unearned Stevens runs in the first inning were pretty much the deciding factor.
Fall Mountain coach Molly McManus came into the game with a plan of running and bunting, and her Wildcats did that, but she didn’t plan on a jittery defensive first inning. Fall Mountain made three errors on a pressure-packed afternoon before a good-sized crowd.
“We got over that first inning, but it cost us in the end,” she said.
A two-out Amber Beliveau single and stolen base, followed by an Allie Stoddart base knock, gave Fall Mountain a run in the top of the first, but a Pond single with one out was followed by two Wildcat errors, a Kate Chambers single and another Wildcat miscue to give the Cardinals three runs.
After that, however, runs were hard to come by for Stevens. The Cards did get one in the second when Makayla Maccioli hit a liner to center field that got under the outfielder’s glove, allowing Maccioli to circle the bases.
The only other Stevens run came in the fifth, when a Morgan Rhoades base hit was followed by a Chambers base hit with Rhoades on the move. Rhoades kept moving as the Wildcats relayed the ball back to the infield, scoring before the visitors to recover and throw home. It proved to be the game-winning score.
Fall Mountain scored a single run in the third on a Beliveau single, a stolen base, an error and a wild pitch. Two more Wildcats scored in the sixth on RBI singles from Vogel and Savana Wilson.
Vogel was the complete-game pitcher for Fall Mountain. The junior gave up nine hits but was around the plate, walking just one. She had four strikeouts.
Notes: McManus, the Fall Mountain coach, is a 2005 Stevens graduate. Nichols graduated from Fall Mountain in 1985. … Stevens’ Tanner Brown hit six foul balls in the home fifth during an 11-pitch at-bat in which she eventually flied to center. … The game was originally scheduled to be played at 7 p.m., but was moved to 5 p.m. when a bank of lights proved unusable.