St. Charles East softball cruises past Batavia

BATAVIA – To say St. Charles East softball has gotten off to a strong start to the season would be an understatement.

The Saints were back in action Monday and used an offensive outburst in the second inning to beat Batavia, 15-7, to stay unbeaten in Upstate Eight Conference River Division play.

That second inning consisted of eight runs on six hits, allowing East to jump out to an early lead en route to its fifth straight win.

“We were able to string a bunch of hits together today,” Saints coach Kelly Horan said. “That’s what you have to do to be successful. Everyone, one through nine, has to contribute in some way, and we did that today.”

East (14-1, 6-0 UEC River) also capitalized on five Batavia errors, three in the second inning. Sophomore Rylee Stout had four hits, including a home run, and scored four times.

Stout also caught all seven innings for the Saints on what turned out to be a cold day, and got a good look at winning pitcher Jordan Hall.

“Jordan pitched an amazing game,” Stout said. “Her changeup worked really well today. She got a lot of swings and misses on it, so it was hard not to keep calling it. Our defense is always there to back us, too, so it was a good all-around win for us.”

Hall (8-0) pitched six innings, allowing five runs (four earned) and striking out two. Although the numbers didn’t pop out at first glance, Horan thought Hall got into a groove after working in and out of trouble in the first few innings.

“We had a jam-packed week, so I kind of said it was all right if today was a little bit of a struggle for her,” Horan said. “She got into a nice rhythm late, which was good because we have a couple more big conference games this week. It’s good to see her fight through some adversity because we are going to need her.”

The Saints will host Waubonsie Valley today and St. Charles North on Wednesday.

Batavia (8-6, 3-3) fought back a few times offensively after the Saints rallied, but East simply had too much for the Bulldogs.

Batavia coach Lupe Castellanos knew his team would have to play close to perfect to come away with a win, and the errors ended up hurting.

“You can’t give a good team like that extra outs,” Castellanos said. “We did some things well today, but you have to limit your mistakes. They capitalized every time we made an error or had a lapse defensively, and you can’t do that against these guys.”

Batavia’s seven runs were the second most scored against East this season, with the only higher total coming in East’s only loss of the season, 11-3, to Fremd.

The Saints had 18 hits, which was one of their high totals of the season, and the 15 runs were the second most this season.

Jordan Hieber and Kelly Rinker each had three hits for the Saints.

Jena Bendoraitis led the Bulldogs with three hits, while Toni Galas scored three runs.