Big Second Inning Carries Fox Lane Past the Panthers
A five-run second inning carried Fox Lane to a 9-1 road victory over Pleasantville last Thursday afternoon, helping the Foxes get over the sting of a loss 24 hours earlier. Coach Anthony Rodrigues thought his team fired on all cylinders to rebound from the previous day’s defeat.
“I was pleased because we lost a tough game, came back, and played a good game,” he said. “We got some timely hitting and bounced back. We have a pretty good hitting team and sometimes when we get it going we can be tough. We had some really good at-bats. Our girls were able to get on base by hit or error, which was a good thing.”
The Foxes were trailing 1-0 entering the top of the second inning, but went to work on the Panthers, sending 10 batters to the plate and scoring five times. Foxes’ third baseman Jenna D’Adamo knocked in the first run with a bloop single to center field and later came in to score on an error. Left fielder Allison Lombardi delivered a frozen-rope hit into left field to bring in another run. Isabella Rago smacked a sacrifice fly to right field, allowing Jackie Gigante to score the third run.
Another Pleasantville error brought Alexis Bazos in from third base to cap the big inning. The Panthers committed five errors, something their coach, Gina Perino, is not used to seeing from them.
“We made mistakes defensively that we don’t normally do,” she said. “We added outs to every inning, which we don’t normally do, and it cost us. Defensively, it’s not the team we are and once you get in a hole on a good team it’s very difficult to come back.”
The Panthers, fresh off a victory over Croton-Harmon, received their lone run in the bottom of the first on an RBI single to left field off the bat of Stephanie Rogers. The base hit plated Liz Manley from second base.
Fox Lane was able to extend its lead with a pair of runs in the top of the fifth inning. Bazos clubbed a two-run double to left, giving the Foxes a 7-1 edge. They would go on to add a run in the top of the sixth and another in the seventh, both of them aided by Panther errors.
Bazos finished the day 2-for-4 and also held the Panthers scoreless on the mound after giving up the RBI single in the first. She walked two batters and struck out three on the way to her fifth win of the year. Rodrigues was proud his eighth grade pitcher was able to go into shutdown mode, getting into a rhythm with catcher Christie Lombardi.
“She threw strikes,” he said of Bazos. “She worked really well with her catcher, Christie, and mixed up her pitches.”
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.