Hazelwood West Loses Suburban North Softball Opener At Ritenour

OVERLAND – In the moments following Tuesday’s Suburban North Conference girls softball opener, head coach Jack Scanio could only shake his head and smile.

And even though his Wildcats had just comeback from 6-3 and 8-6 deficits to take a 9-8 lead in the top of the seventh, the team blew that advantage in the bottom half of the inning. Even with Hazelwood West suffering the 10-9 loss to league rival Ritenour High School, Scanio wasn’t angry at all.

West High's head man had a mood was much closer to reflective.

“You can’t get mad,” Scanio said. “This is high school. We’re going to make some mistakes sometimes. If we never made mistakes, they’d call us professionals.”

From the mistakes of which Scanio spoke, the most glaring for West were the seven errors the team committed on defense. Those errors contributed greatly to Ritenour gaining its initial three-run advantage early in the game.

“It seemed like both teams kind of helped out the other team with the errors today,” Scanio said. “They helped us out with some (bad) plays, and we kind of returned the favor with even more (bad) plays. That’s why they call them high school athletes.”

Those high school athletes orchestrated some kind of fantastic finish, with both teams scoring multiple times in the final two innings, and the lead changing hands multiple times, before Ritenour finally closed out the game with two tallies in the bottom of the seventh.

West began the excitement with a three-run rally in the top of the sixth, thanks to a two-run triple by catcher Danielle Drone, who later scored the game-tying run, on a sacrifice fly by teammate Roxanne Dennis.

Ritenour went back up though, in the bottom of the sixth, after a leadoff single by Emily Smith, an RBI triple by Jenelle Williams, and an RBI double by Karlee Twillman.

The Huskies led 8-6 at that point, but the Wildcats rallied again.

Rebbecca Keiper, Shelby Howard and Natalie Spain each singled to start the seventh, setting up a bases-loaded situation for Emily Russeau, who drove in a run with a groundball out.

Teammate Alex Linck then tied the game with a sacrifice fly to left that scored Howard, but could’ve potentially cleared the bases were it not for a diving catch by the Ritenour leftfielder.

But the Wildcats still weren’t done, as Drone blooped a single to short right field that scored Spain, with West’s ninth run to give the visitors the lead.

Unfortunately though, West relief pitcher Kelsey Donahue couldn’t hold the lead for the Wildcats.

She gave up three straight singles of her own to start the bottom of the ninth, and then allowed the game-tying run to score on a groundball out by Ritenour’s Nikki Baker.

Donahue then struck out Ritenour’s Lindsay Mahn to set up a final showdown with Smith, Ritenour’s top-hitter.

And boy did the senior deliver, with a line-shot basehit to right, her fifth of the day, that scored Baker with the game-winning run.

“There’s some really good hitters on both these teams,” Scanio said. “We’ve got to work on a lot of things. This is a good group we’ve got. We’ll get better.”

West, which is now 3-5 on the season, will be back in action on Thursday, with two games at ABC Ballpark in St. Ann.

That evening, the Wildcats will play Villa Duchesne at 6 p.m., and Incarnate Word Academy at 7:45 p.m.

West’s next home game is set for Friday, September 16, when the Wildcats will host Fort Zumwalt South at 4:15 p.m.

Score by Innings

R

H

E

Hazelwood West

0

3

0

0

0

3

3

9

13

7

Ritenour

0

1

3

2

0

2

2

10

20

2

WP: Karlee Twillman – Ritenour

LP: Kelsey Donahue – Hazelwood West