Simms, Teets discuss the importance of scoring first prior to Class A title game
CALIFORNIA — During preview interviews last Tuesday to hype up the WPIAL Class A softball championship, both head coaches, Billy Simms of West Greene and Bo Teets of Monessen, talked about the importance of scoring the first run of the game.
The words of Simms and Teets rang prophetic as McKenna Lampe led off the game with a bunt single down the third-base line and West Greene was on its way.
“McKenna has the freedom to bunt when she wants and we have a secret signal,” Simms said. “She laid it down and we went from there.
“I made a comment once that I seem a hell of a lot smarter when I write down (McKenna) Lampe, (Madison) Lampe, (Madison) Renner, (Kaitlyn) Rizor and (Jade) Renner, and I think that is a pretty good problem to have at the top of the lineup.”
Teets spoke about Lampe getting on.
“Those two girls at the top of the lineup (the Lampe sisters) are as good as you are going to see,” he said. “If either gets on, they are standing on third almost every time.
“The gameplan was to keep them off of the bases and we didn’t do that today.”
After Madison Lampe flew out to center field, McKenna Lampe stole second and scored on a Madison Renner’s single to center.
West Greene scored two more runs in the first off of Monessen junior ace Dana Vatakis, a Robert Morris commit, with the help of two errors, but the damage was already done.
West Greene added two runs in the third, one in the fourth, and tallied four in the six before retiring Monessen in the bottom of the sixth to enact the Mercy Rule and win its second straight WPIAL Class A championship.
For Simms, he spoke about how he was happy that Monessen won the coin toss and that Teets chose to be the home team.
“The biggest weight off of my chest was the coin flip as I have sleepless nights thinking if I am going to put our offense out there to score first,” he said. “Low and behold, Bo won and took it off of me.
“I really didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Moving forward into the PIAA tournament, it is a safe bet that both coaches will once again look to get the first run on the board.