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Sports

Solid Pitching Pushes Plainfield North Over Romeoville

Tigers use timely hitting and belt two home runs in win over Spartans.

For Plainfield North pitcher Erin Enk, the gameplan was pretty simple.

“I don’t have that much speed on the ball, but I do have some curve,” Enk said. “That did the job today.”

The Tigers rode Enk’s workmanlike performance to a 4-1 victory over Romeoville on Tuesday. It was the sophomore pitcher’s first varsity win, and Plainfield North Coach Claude Ainsworth was pleased with the way his pitcher stuck to what she does best.

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“We throw in and out, in and out and change speeds on them and keep them off stride. That’s Erin’s game, she’s really good at it — keeping people off stride. And she’s a sophomore and she’s getting a lot more confidence every day,” Ainsworth said after the game.

Plainfield jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning when Shannon Vaughn scored on a passed ball. Vaughn setup her score by drawing a lead-off walk, advancing to second base on a ground ball out by Brace Oberg and stealing third base with some clever baserunning. 

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The Tigers wouldn’t score again until the fourth inning, when Kelly Kennedy hit a solo home run over the centerfield wall to make the score 2-0. Plainfield added some insurance runs in the seventh inning when Oberg hit a two-run homer to put the Tigers up 4-0. Oberg’s trip around the bases came as quite a surprise to Ainsworth and may cause him to rethink his hitting instructions.

“What a lousy coach I am, I have her batting lefty all the time and here she is powering one over the left centerfield fence (batting right)," Ainsworth said. "Holy smokes! No one was more surprised than I was."

Although the Romeoville team knew exactly what pitches were coming, they just couldn’t seem to hit them.

“The pitcher threw fastball-changeup, we just couldn’t sit back on it,” Coach Christina Douglas said after the game. “I mean, she was throwing changeups for strikes in the first inning all the way through the seventh. We just couldn’t get ahold of it.”

Despite being unable to put runs on the scoreboard, a major positive in the loss was the play from pitcher Melissa Guzior. Douglas was very happy with the way Guzior pitched, but knows how hard it is to get a win without run support. 

“My pitcher did great. I told my girls that this was probably the first game that she pitched her best, we just couldn’t put runs up for her,” said Douglas. “It’s hard to go seven innings with zero runs up until the seventh.”

Guzior pitched a complete game with two strikeouts, four walks and four earned runs on six hits. She was also 1-3 at the plate with a double. A solid stat line, but after hitting two batters, Guzior wasn’t ready to give herself any praise after the game.

“I’ve been working on getting my moving pitches to be working a lot more,” Guzior said of her performance. “That’s why I hit a couple of girls, because I’m trying to get onto the black where they can’t hit it. The only time they really hit me was when I missed that, so I just need to keep working on getting consistent with that.”

But the quality of her pitching can’t just be described in the box score. At one point in the second and third innings, she threw first-pitch strikes to seven straight batters. 

“I work my hardest, I’m trying to make every pitch count,” said Guzior. “I’ve been lacking focus my last two games so I’ve really tried to focus and zero in on what I’m doing. It’s just me and the catcher, so I’m just trying to keep it me and her.”

With a mindset like this combined with an 8-3 record to start to the season, this Spartan team feels like the sky is the limit.

“We can all do it, we just have to have faith in ourselves and perform,” said Guzior. 

“Expect great things from the Spartans, we’re still working our way up there.”

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