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Lady Warriors stun Belle Vernon, 2-0

By Bill Hughes for The 3 min read

WASHINGTON TWP. — Elizabeth Forward took advantage of a pair of Belle Vernon miscues and of freshman pitcher Kailey Larcinese’s solid performance to knock off the defending WPIAL Class AAAA champs in a Section 2-AAAA softball game Thursday.

“I am extremely happy because when you take on the WPIAL champs and a team that you haven’t beaten in a while, we did good,” said EF coach Harry Rutherford. “The difference in the game was us running and taking advantage of their mistakes.

“To beat a rival on their field, it was a big test.”

Elizabeth Forward stole four bases in the game.

“The errors killed us and we didn’t have any timely hits,” Lady Leopards coach Tom Rodriguez said. “We need to do a better job and my goodness, we told them (before the season) what could be issues is if we don’t hit and don’t play good defense.

“They ran on us and give them credit.”

Larcinese struck out nine Belle Vernon (1-1, 0-1) batters in a pitcher’s duel against Belle Vernon’s Bailey Parhsall who finished with 15 strikeouts and only yielded a single safety.

The game was scoreless until the fourth.

With one out in the top of the inning, Parshall hit Taylor Ludwick.

She stole second base and the ball went into center field on the throw.

Belle Vernon’s outfielder misplayed the ball and Ludwick scored what would be the game-winning run.

The Lady Warriors (6-0, 1-0) added an unearned insurance run in the seventh.

Anna Resnik led off the inning with a walk.

She stole both second and third base and, one out later, scored on a fielder’s-choice grounder by Larcinese when the throw home sailed over catcher Ally Pacak’s head.

“Kailey put the ball on the right side of the field which is what we wanted,” said Rutherford. “And Anna is the fastest kid on our team and we will send her every single time.”

Belle Vernon threatened in the bottom of the seventh.

Casey Weightman led off with an infield single and Parshall hit a line drive over the head of EF left fielder Taylor Jeffers. Weightman held up to make sure the ball was not caught and, therefore, had to stop at second base, forcing Parshall to hold at first with her second hit of the game.

Kourtney Gavatorta hit into a fielder’s choice with Parshall thrown out at second as Weightman advanced to third.

With one out and runners on first and third, Mekenzie Sokol hit a line drive to second baseman Jordan Pinneri who threw to first to double off Gavatorta to end the game.

Rodriguez did not mince words when talking about what his team needs to do.

“We need to work hard,” he said. “We need to improve out hitting and defense and hopefully we can turn it around.”

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