Nicole DiGiambattista clubbed one home run and came within a few feet of two more as the Perryville softball team routed Rising Sun 12-4 Wednesday afternoon, April 17. DiGiambattista finished with four RBIs as the Panthers gained a measure of revenge against a Tiger team that had staged a seventh inning rally to take the first meeting between the schools. "We just kind of kept our focus, which is playing like kind of laid back," DiGiambattista said. "I feel like the first game against Rising Sun we were kind of like uptight and [in the second meeting], once we were in it we found our groove. We strung some hits together." Perryville jumped on top with two unearned runs in the top of the first. Amber Keene reached on an error and Ellen Little singled to right. After Jordyn Reese walked to load the bases, DiGiambattista plated Keene with a sacrifice fly to deep center. Little scored when Kristyn Gardner was safe on an error.
Rising Sun responded with a run in the home half. Ally Bradford led off with an infield hit and advanced to second on a throwing error. She moved to third on Molly Dill's groundout and scored as Panthers' second baseman Hannah Gordon made a nice play to retire Alyssa Paulette. Unlike the first meeting, Perryville kept tacking on runs this time, tallying four times in the top of the second. It all happened with two outs. Keene and Little each singled. Then bang, bang. Reese roped a two-run double into the left field corner and DiGiambattista followed with a towering two-run homer to center. Just like that, Perryville led 6-1. "Really, we didn't talk about last time at all," Perryville coach Dave Ruark said. "It was kind of a collapse that was so uncharacteristic of them. We're really not dwelling on that at all. It's another day, another opportunity to swing the bat a little bit better. I'd have liked to have seen a cleaner defensive game but we really brought it with two outs…One-through-five hitters really, really carried us and hit the ball great." Although it wasn't discussed much, Perryville proved it had learned a valuable lesson from that first encounter: It's imperative to tack on runs and not be satisfied with a slim lead. "It's very important," said DiGiambattista. "I feel like in the beginning of the season we kind of like got the intensity, and then at the end, we laid back a little bit. Obviously in the first game against Rising Sun kind of bit us in the butt. We have to finish the game how we start the game." In the top of the fourth, DiGiambattista and Mara Little had back-to-back RBI singles and Little eventually scored on a wild pitch to pad the lead to 9-2. The Tigers trimmed the deficit down to 9-4 on consecutive doubles by Bella Barbato, Alex Swanson, and Emily Consiglio, but Perryville kept scoring. DiGiambattista narrowly missed her second homer of the game when she smashed a line drive that hit the left field fence. "She's been dialed in for a bit now," Ruark said of the Panthers' first baseman. "She had a little bit of an injury [the previous week] and she's good now. But she's definitely kind of come into her own - her maturity, how calm she is, and confidence I've seen at time in four years, but she's really carrying herself well right now and swinging a great bat." Rising Sun was coming off a 4-2 victory over Bel Air the previous day with a game against Elkton set for Thursday. "We had a couple people moved out of position. We were trying some things," Rising Sun coach Rusty Moore said. "We've got to get ready for the playoffs. We have three games in three days. We just saw the opportunity after [Wednesday's] cold game, a good game with Bel Air, we just felt it was the opportunity we need to see some younger girls pitch and so we moved some people around. We had to go out of our comfort zone a little bit and you saw what happened. We were out of our comfort zone and we made mistakes. We hit the ball well at times but we've got to continue to put those things together." Comments are closed.
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