Poland rallies for 10-4 league victory

By Tom Williams | April 15, 2011 at 12:10a.m.

HOWLAND

An unusual defensive breakdown had the Poland High softball team in a rare position — tied in the fifth inning of a league game.

Two wild pitches and two infield errors helped Howland wipe out a 3-0 deficit against last year’s Division II state runner-up.

But the undefeated Bulldogs shook off those miscues and rallied behind Erin Gabriel’s two homers plus a solo shot by Adriana Sikora for Thursday’s 10-4 victory in the All-American Conference Red Tier showdown.

“Good teams take advantage of your mistakes,” Howland coach Bill Amero said. “There a couple of mistake pitches that they took advantage of — it was their day.”

With a busy weekend looming at the Wendy’s Classic in Ashland, Poland coach Reid Lamport used his ace Gabriel at second base to give his other strong pitcher, Jenna Modic, a league contest.

Modic (2-0) contributed three singles while Gabriel drove in five runs and Sikora two against the Tigers (4-1, 0-1).

“Offensively, I think we’re explosive,” Lamport said. “We scored 10 runs against a team that was 4-0.

“This was an opportunity for Jenna to pitch against a good team.

“We had that defensive meltdown and that concerned me a little bit,” Lamport said. “We kinda let her down that one inning defensively. Outside of that, I thought we played pretty well.”

Gabriel’s first homer was a line drive over the left-field fence that put Poland (6-0, 1-0) ahead 4-3 in the fifth inning.

Her second one came an inning later, a three-run shot over the center-field fence that opened up an 8-3 lead. It was her fifth homer in six games

Sikora set up Gabriel’s second homer with her two-out RBI single that drove in Poland’s first run of a five-run sixth inning. Sikora added a solo homer in the seventh inning that hit the top of the center-field fence and bounced over.

After going 0 for 3 to start the game, Sikora said she found a way to relax.

“I didn’t start off so great but you just have to put it behind you,” the senior right fielder said. “I never expect a home run so it was exciting.”

Sikora and Modic agreed it was fun to get to play in sunshine, a rarity the past three weeks.

“We love to take advantage of weather like this,” Sikora said. “I think we’ve had more canceled games than games actually played so it’s nice to take advantage of a day like this.”

Modic said she enjoyed “having awesome weather for our first [Red] Tier game.“

Amero said, “The positive out of the whole thing is that it was a beautiful day. We’ve not played back-to-back — hopefully we will tomorrow. It’s [been] play a game, be off for three-four-five games, play a game, be off.”

Poland (6-0, 1-0) jumped ahead 3-0 in the first inning, with Gabriel, Taylor Miokovic and Meredith Testa each driving in a run.

Asked what she took away from Howland’s three-run third inning, Modic said, “I learned to just buckle down, take a deep breath and relax, and put that behind me, just move on to the next batter.

“It was a wake-up call,” Modic said. “Anybody can hit that ball at any time so we’ve always got to be on our toes.

Lamport said he tells his players that physical errors are part of the game.

“But when you’re not covering bases, when you’re not mentally in that play itself, now that’s a different situation,” Lamport said. “We’ve got to get better at that [but] the mistakes that we made are correctable.”