No. 1 EF rallies past No. 8 Knoch
By JEREMY SELLEW
jsellew@yourmvi.com
Elizabeth Forward’s Kailey Larcinese usually is the story of the game for the Warriors when it comes to work in the circle.
Monday, though, the Warriors hurler did her damage with the bat when her team needed it the most.
Playing for the first time in 12 days, the top-seeded Warriors brought out the big bats to come from behind and beat No. 8 Knoch, 7-5, at Plum High School to advance to the WPIAL semifinals.
“It wasn’t pretty at all,” EF head coach Harry Rutherford said. “But we knew we have a big inning every game and we knew it would come.”
It looked as if the big inning may have been the first, as Anna Resnik led off with a walk and Bri Sersevic followed with a single. A batter later, Grace Smith crushed the first pitch she saw deep to center for a three-run homer to give her team an early 3-0 lead.
Knoch responded in the top of the second, thanks to some unusual shoddy defense from the Warriors.
Knoch’s Quinn Hughes reached on a fielder’s choice before teammate Madi Gardner hit a hard liner to right. EF’s Lauren Vay came in but the ball hit off the top of her glove and rolled to the fence for an error. Hughes came into score to make it 3-1.
Bailey Rickenbrode singles hard to left and Gardner headed for home, but the through from left fielder Carlee Soukop was cut off by Larcinese, just a few feet from Sersevic at the plate. It looked as if the throw would have beat Gardner for the out.
After she cut the throw off, Larcinese turned and fired to second to try to get Rickenbrode and the ball sailed past the base and into the outfield where it rolled all the way to the fence.
Rickenbrode came in to score and tie the game.
“I couldn’t hear anything but screaming, so I don’t know if maybe I heard someone say cut it or what,” Larcinese said. “And I don’t know what happened on that throw.”
In the top of the third, the Knights (10-8) added on with a two-run blast from Brynnae Coe.
“I don’t know what was going on, but I wasn’t comfortable out there,” Larcinese said. “I was hitting my spots, but they did a good job of staying on my rise ball. They weren’t dipping under it. Every big hit they had was on the rise.”
The momentum began to tick back in the Warriors’ direction as Vay made up for her earlier error with a great diving catch to save a run to end the inning.
“We all have high expectations,” Larcinese said. “We just had to pick Lauren up after the error and she made the biggest play for us defensively.”
Larcinese admitted after committing the error early on and allowing the two-run homer, she looked at the scoreboard and found herself down a little bit.
“I looked up and just said to myself, ‘This isn’t the way this is supposed to end,’” she said.
Then she got her team started with her bat.
Larcinese led off the bottom of the fourth with a rocket over the center-field fence to pull her team within one. Mackenzie Kearns followed with a single and Resnik gave her team the lead for good with a two-run bomb to right center.
“We knew the big inning was coming,” Rutherford said. “Yes, we got three in the first, but that was one at-bat. We hadn’t had the inning where we were hitting each other around the bases.”
Leading 6-5, the Warriors (16-2) added and insurance run in the bottom of the fifth when Larcinese peppered the left-field fence with a hard liner to score Brooke Markland.
The Warriors hit the ball hard each nearly every time they made contact.
“We’ve done a lot of work on our hitting,” Larcinese said. “In practice, we know our defense is pretty good, so we’ve been real focused on our work with the bats.”
Once she got the lead, Larcinese was on cruise control in the circle. She allowed a bloop single to Coe in the top of the fifth and that was it for the Knights. Larcinese, who struck out six, retired nine of the last 10 batters she faced. The one she didn’t was a walk in the top of the seventh.
The Knights’ Lindsay Edwards thought she tied the game with two outs in the seventh, but Soukop caught her long fly ball on the warning track to end the game.
“The big thing for us is we got down and there was no fear there,” Rutherford said. “That’s a good team. They finished tied for their section and they shouldn’t have been the eight seed. They’re better than an eight and they were motivated. A lot of those players were on the team we beat two years ago, so they had that bulletin-board material.”
With the win, the Warriors will face the winner of the quarterfinal between No. 4 Montour and No. 5 Highlands in Wednesday’s semifinal. They play at 4 p.m. today at North Allegheny after being rained out Monday.
“We moved practice up, so I’m glad I’ll be able to head up that way and watch that one,” Rutherford said.
The WPIAL will announce the site and time of Wednesday’s semifinal today.
