Lady Cats Use Solid Pitching And Offense To Down Lady Falcons And Advance To D9 1A Softball Finals (05/25/19)
(Photos courtesy of Kim Constantino) Photo above: Jordan Best heading home on inside the park homer.
A masterful performance in the circle by Kait Constantino and some big time offense, against A-C Valley, was the perfect formula to move the Clarion Area Lady Cats to the District Nine Class A Softball championship game.
With the 5-1 semifinal win, at Clarion-Limestone on Friday (May 24th), over the Lady Falcons, the Cats will move on to play the DuBois Central Catholic Lady Cardinals, on Wednesday (May 29th) at a location and time to be announced.
Constantino struck out 8 of the first 9 batters she faced, on way to a 14 strikeout performance, in which she didn’t issue a walk and gave up just the one earned run.
Clarion got on the board with a run in the bottom of the second. With two outs and nobody on, Noel Anthony had a single to right. On the very next at bat, Ava Kiser smacked a double to center, driving Noel home.
The score would remain 1-0 until the bottom of the fifth. Tori Vega had a lead off double. the next batter, Payton Simko, hit a fly ball to center that fell to the ground, Vega scored on the play and Simko wound up at second. She would score on a single by Lindsey Kemmer on the next play. The Lady Cats now led 3-0.
The Clarion Lead would move to 5-0, in the sixth. With one out, Simko drew a walk. She advanced to second on a fielder’s choice. With two outs now, Jordan Best hit made good contact and with the ball making it all the way to the fence, she turned on the jets and heading to third, she got the green light and went around follow Simko across the plate.
A-C Valley closed out the scoring when Cami McNany who singled and stole second, was driven home on a single by Meah Ielase.
Lady Cat stats: Constantino had 2 hits, including a double; Carly Best scored a run. Jordan Best had the home run, 1 run scored and two RBIs.
Vega had 3 hits, including a pair of doubles and scorde a run. Simko scored arun. Kemmer singled and had an RBI. Kiser doubled and drove in a run and Anthony singled and scored.
For the Falcons: McNany had 3 hits, including a double, and scored their run. Ielase had the single and RBI. Kelsie Terwilliger had a single.
Cooach Shofestall had this to say about his team’s fine performance. “It was a good team win against a good A-C Valley team. We talked before the game about playing solid defense behind Kaitlyn’s pitching and I thought we did a pretty good job of that.
“To be successful in the playoffs, you need a team of contributors and that’s what we had tonight. Eleven girls contributing to the same common goal. We strive to give perfect effort on every pitch and by doing that we win a lot of pitches. Ask anyone of our players on this team what the most important pitch of the game is and they’ll all tell you the next pitch.
“We’re happy to be in the District Final, but we understand we have a challenge ahead of us. DuBois Central Catholic is a quality team and one we have respect for. But we also have a good team and are looking forward to the game. Hoping to see a large turnout of fans to watch us play next week and cheer the team on.”
(GREAT JOB, LADY CATS!!!! LET’S GO WIN DISTRICTS!!!!)