Reserve, JFK advance to district final

Elizabeth Srock shut down Lordstown, while the Eagles’ offense handled Aquinas.

CORTLAND — Western Reserve’s Elizabeth Srock might have been a bit under the weather, but that didn’t stop her — or the Blue Devils — on Monday.

In the first of two Division IV district semifinal games, Srock tossed a one-hit shutout to lead Reserve to a 5-0 victory against Lordstown.

In the nightcap, Warren JFK used 16 hits to earn a 13-2 triumph over St. Thomas Aquinas.

JFK (13-5) makes its second consecutive trip to the district final when it squares off against Western Reserve (17-4) today at 4:30 p.m. at Lakeview High School.

The Blue Devils took a 1-0 lead in the first inning. Leadoff batter Heather Monoski singled, advanced to second when Srock was hit by a pitch and scored on a Lordstown fielding error.

“Who doesn’t like to score early in a big game?” Western Reserve coach Joe Serensky said. “There aren’t many coaches who say we’d like to score late in a game. It takes some pressure off the players and gives them a psychological lift when they take a lead right away.”

Western Reserve got another unearned run in the third when Sissy Stubbs reached and scored by way of two Lordstown errors.

Lordstown coach Kim Strimpel said her team has not committed many errors this season.

“We had more in today’s game than we had in any other game this season,” she said. “Our pitcher [Briana Sinn] pitched a good game, but the errors hurt.”

Srock helped herself out in the fourth inning when she doubled home teammates Taylor Young and Presley Cummings as part of a three-run inning that pushed the lead to 5-0.

Srock said she was looking for a particular pitch to drive and happened to get one.

“I watched the batter before me [Monoski] and Lordstown’s pitcher [Sinn] was throwing her inside.” Srock said. “So I went up looking for an inside pitch and I swung at the first one I saw because most of her first pitches were strikes.”

The five runs were more than enough for Srock (14-2). The right handed ace struck out 11 and walked one.

Serensky said Srock’s changeup gave Lordstown (13-4) trouble for most of the game.

“That’s been the story of her season,” he said. “She’s had good command of her pitches and kept the hitters off balance. Early on it looked like they [Lordstown] were on to her change-up because she left a couple of them up. But she kept the change-up down as the game wore on.”

In the other contest, JFK jumped to a 3-0 in the first inning and never looked back.

Morgan Piacquadio led off with a walk and scored when Rachael Ratcliffe tripled to right center field. Kim Sylvester, who went 3-for-5 with three RBIs and three runs scored, raked a triple to right that plated Ratcliffe. Sylvester later scored on an error to give the Eagles a 3-0 lead.

JFK scored four runs in the fifth and seventh innings.

The bottom of JFK’s lineup did most of the damage. No. 7 hitter Gina Gelsomino went 4-for-5 with and RBI and two runs scored and the eighth batter, Chanel Thorton, went 5-for-5 with two RBIs and two runs.

Rachel Pico, who earned the victory on the mound for the Eagles, said the bottom of the line up came through.

“At the beginning of the season we weren’t sure how it was going to look,” she said. “But they have been terrific. To see them hit like that has been both amazing and helpful at the same time.”

Coach Joe Sylvester said his team will get a good test against Western Reserve.

“We’re going to have to be prepared and we can’t afford to make mistakes,” he said.

Pico said because the team gets prepared for tournament play because of a strenuous regular season.

“We play up [in terms of divisions] almost every game in the regular season,” she said. “When we play in the Division IV tournament we don’t know what to expect from every team because we usually haven’t faced them. But we watched Western Reserve play before us and we know we are going to have to play a good game to win.”