St Basil advances to District-1 AA final, cruises past New Hope-Solebury
WARMINSTER >> With such a young roster, one that contains zero seniors, conventional wisdom would say New Hope-Solebury coach Chris Marchok would be happy with a District-1 AA playoff appearance.
“It was a goal to win districts,” Marchok said.
The Lions will have to wait their turn as St. Basil took down New Hope 10-0 in five innings to advance to District 1 final.
Generating walks have not been a strong suit for the Panthers this season but Tuesday afternoon saw them exercise great discipline as they drew six walks that helped contribute to big innings.
“We don’t walk a lot normally but (the New Hope pitcher) was off the plate a little but so they were kind of patient,” Basil coach Steve Sonneborn said. “That’s a lot (of walks) I don’t think we’ve had six walks all year.”
Through one inning of play the Panther onslaught did not seem prevalent as New Hope had a runner reach third base but get stranded as the Panthers went down in order in their half.
The second inning is when the plate discipline kicked in as the Panthers took four free passes and cashed in on an error as they jumped out to 4-0 lead. The second inning was just a precursor as Basil would put a two-spot up in the third followed by another four in the fourth.
“We’ve been working on trying to get them to swing at strikes,” Sonneborn said. “We have some hitters that are very good but when they get out of that zone then we’re not having good at bats.”
Coming into the season St. Basil had to figure out what it was going to do with its pitching. After losing its top pitcher of last couple years, Nicole Eberhard, to graduation and its top candidate to replace her Marissa Brown transferring to Archbishop Wood in November the Panthers were looking to fill a void on the rubber.
Basil found its girl in Kiera Peters, who played third base last year for the Panthers, but after a line drive struck her in the face about two weeks ago it put her on the shelf for the rest of the year.
Enter Arianna Sticco. Now the top arm in the Basil rotation, no one will mistake her as a strikeout master but that’s not necessarily a requisite trait as the Panthers demonstrated Tuesday they have the ability to be a solid defensive team.
“Our team is a team that when we play good defense we’re in every game or we have a good opportunity to win,” Sonneborn said. “Most of the games that we lost this year were when we played poor defense. We have the ability to play good defense but sometimes we just go brain dead or something, I don’t know what it is.”
Sticco and the rest of the Panthers need to ready come Thursday afternoon as it will square off with a good Christopher Dock team also coming off a 10-0 win as it defeated Springfield in the other semifinal matchup.
“We know that Dock is always good, they’re well coached and they have a lot of talent,” Sonneborn said. “We’re going to have our hands full (and) we’re going to have to play a perfect game.”
