Viscardo’s bat and arm carry Villa Maria past Villa Joe’s
MALVERN—Villa Maria’s Alyssa Viscardo was cruising along and just one out away from clamping down a victory for her Hurricanes over visiting rival Villa Joseph Marie when there was a lengthy break for the umpires to check on an obscure rule involving rosters, line-up cards and jersey numbers. When play resumed, the Jems were suddenly awake and hitting—a pair of doubles and a home run from Brooke Morrell later, and the Hurricanes were down a run.
No worries, it took just two batters for Villa Maria to forget about the top half of the inning. Riley Miller led off the inning with a walk, then Viscardo ripped a shot to deepest left down the line, circling the bases for a walk-off, inside-the-park home run, and Hurricanes came away with the 6-5 win.
“I have to admit, I was still kind of mad about what had just happened, giving up the lead,” said Viscardo. “So I went up and just tried to hit the ball as hard as I could. I knew we were going to at least tie the game with Riley, but I wanted it to end there. I’m actually pretty slow most of the time, but I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life to get home.”
Prior to the top half of the sixth, Viscardo had allowed just one unearned run on four hits, while striking out seven while walking none. The last of those whiffs was the 400 strikeout of Viscardo’s high school career.
“Those things don’t really faze me,” said Viscardo, a University of Hartford recruit. “I’m proud to get there, so I guess it is kind of exciting. But I’m more excited about getting the win. This was a total team effort to get it today.”
The Jems took the early lead with an unearned run in the top half of the fourth, but the Hurricanes tied it in the bottom half when Emma Woodcock tripled, then scored on an error in the bottom half.
Villa Maria put up a big inning in the fifth, pushing across three runs. Georgia Elinsky led off with a walk, to bring up Riley Miller. The Hurricane center fielder had been struggling so far on the young season, but came up big, stroking a hard liner to the gap in left center to knock in Elinsky and put Villa Maria up 2-1.
“I had been getting way out ahead of the ball the past few games,” said Miller. “I just had to get more patient and stay back on pitches more. Felt really good to come through for the team because we all really wanted it. Even when we went down in the seventh, I still knew we had it.”
After Viscardo brought Miller home with a sacrifice fly to left, Fran Delviscio picked up a base hit to left, where it was misplayed by the Jems’ fielder, allowing Delviscio to score on the three-base error.
“These are the kinds of games you love to play,” said Hurricane coach Nikki Hartshorn. “These are the kinds of games you need to play if you want to go deep in a season. You need to know you can play in these kinds of games and win. Now we know we can stay calm in adversity and respond the way we did and win the close ones.”
