Though it spent most of the last week of the regular season getting the proper balance of rest and practice before the start of the Section III Class AA playoffs, the Liverpool softball team also got in a game – and quite a game, as it turned out.
Meeting two-time defending Section III Class A champion Oneida for the second time this spring, the Warriors were again pushed by the Indians, this time deep into extra frames before Liverpool scored twice in the 10th inning and hung on for a 3-1 victory.
These same two sides had met April 15 at Liverpool, and the Warriors had pulled it out, 2-0, thanks to a pair of sixth-inning runs. Now, eight days removed from its last game action (a narrow 1-0 decision over Cicero-North Syracuse on May 12), Liverpool visited Oneida, and found more excitement.
Kyra Sholtzhauer started for the Indians and kept the Warriors off the board until the top of the fifth inning, when it poked across a run, Peyton Bellrose would go the entire route and only allow two hits, but one of them, by Lauren Skibitski, drove home Brianna Laureti with the tying run in the bottom of the sixth.
Through one more inning of regulation and two extra frames, it stayed 1-1. Emily O’Herien had relieved Sholtzhauer in the sixth, and her four shutout frames set up the international rules in the 10th, where a runner is placed on second base at the start of the inning.
Taking full advantage, Liverpool got to O’Herien for those two go-ahead runs, and Bellrose made them stick, running her strikeout total to 15 as she only surrendered three walks. The Warriors finished with 12 hits, three each by Jenna Wike and Joelle Nesci, while Erika Sadowski got two hits as she, along with Wike and Katie Yudin, scored the runs.
Great as that win felt for Liverpool, it didn’t help them too much when it came to the announcement of the nine-team sectional AA playoff bracket.
Despite all it has done, the Warriors are only the no. 2 seed, while Central Square gets the top seed, drawn into a quarterfinal where it could face C-NS if the no. 8 seed Northstars gets past Auburn in Tuesday’s opening round. Baldwinsville and Utica Proctor make up the rest of the top half of the AA bracket.
Liverpool faces the Syracuse City team, the no. 7 seed, in Thursday’s quarterfinals, Syracuse having played Class B foes most of the season in the OHSL Liberty division. The winner goes to a semifinal against no. 3 seed Rome Free Academy or no. 6 seed West Genesee later in the week.
