CENTRAL NEW YORK – Success for area high school softball teams picked up as the schedule did the same, with Jamesville-DeWitt again at the forefront.
What the Red Rams did in last Monday’s game against Auburn was particularly unique, not in the fact that it won 14-1 over the Maroons but the way in which it happened.
Auburn led 1-0 going to the top of the third inning when J-D’s bats got going, and didn’t stop until everyone had got two trips to the plate and 14 runs were on the board.
Emily Qiao’s home run and four RBIs highlighted the charge, while Kayla McQuaid drove in three runs. Leah Peterson, Lyla Commandeur and Hannah Trevisani each had a pair of RBIs and Maddie Murphy got two RBIs on her way to a three-for-three effort.
J-D then handled Oswego 8-1 on Thursday afternoon, Qiao continuing to improve as she limited the Buccaneers to five hits and shut them out until the bottom of the seventh.
By then the Rams had put the game away, though up 3-0 it needed a five-run outburst in the top of the seventh for extra cushion and was helped by seven Oswego errors. Peterson and Schroth were the only two credited with RBIs.
Bishop Grimes moved back above the .500 mark (3-2) taking out Hannibal 15-5 last Monday afternoon, the Cobras putting up four first-inning runs to go in front and continuing to work until it scored six times in the top of the sixth.
Luella Kiefer went three-for-four with two doubles and a single leading to a career-best five RBIs. Gabby St. James doubled as she and Antonella Ascioti had two RBIs apiece, with Rainbow Butler scoring four times from her two hits and three walks. Elizabeth Corl scored three runs.
Grimes was enjoying its best start since 2018, which only got better on Wednesday when the Cobras unloaded on Bishop Ludden in the course of a 27-7 victory.
Nine runs in the first three innings established control but Grimes saved its best work for the top of the fourth, when it didn’t stop until it had scored 11 runs followed up by a seven-run fifth inning.
What helped were the 24 walks the Cobras drew, with Myla Pankow notching four hits, including a double, and getting four RBIs. Rainbow Butler’s pair of doubles drove in six runs as Ascioti, Phoebe Carroll and Ruby Butler drove in two runs apiece and Corl scored four times.
Tully did slow things up for Grimes on Friday, handing the Cobras a 7-1 defeat. Monica Ireland’s sixth-inning single drove in St. James with the Cobras’ lone run, but that came after the Black Knights built a 7-0 lead led by Anna Pierce’s three hits and two RBIs apiece from Desiray Gables and Evelyn Chatfield.
