CR North softball won a pair of games on Saturday in Virginia Beach, including a shutout win over one of Virginia’s top teams.
COUNCIL ROCK NORTH 4, KELLAM 0
COUNCIL ROCK NORTH 23, BAYSIDE 3
Lauren Begg tossed a four-hit gem.
And it wasn’t against just any team. Kellam was a state semifinalist in Virginia last year and has facilities that would make any high school softball envious.
“They have an indoor hitting center – they have three cages indoors that they have access to at all times,” Rock North coach John Engelhardt said. “They have a field with lights. It’s one of the nicest facilities I’ve ever seen.”
Begg – who was expected to see time in the circle this year – was pressed into duty when Virginia Tech-bound Jenna Khantzian injured her finger in a scrimmage against Conwell Egan.
“Literally the second pitch, Jenna takes a ball off her pinky, and it bust open,” Engelhardt said. “We’re thinking – if it’s broken, she’s out 6-10 weeks, and our goals of taking it to the next level and getting back to where we were – I still think we would be able to compete with most teams, but we’re in trouble.
“Thankfully, her finger is not broken, but it’s not healed enough for her to feel comfortable to throw.”
Begg struck out four and walked one in the complete game win.
“Keep in mind – Lauren Begg is a Division I outfielder/slapper,” Engelhardt said. “Last year I told her she was going to pitch, and she only pitched one game. In January we say to Lauren, ‘You don’t have a choice – whether you’re still mad at me or not, you have to pitch,’ and she jumped right into it.
“Lauren has gotten taller and stronger. She threw against Egan, and threw well, but at the end of the game, she started to get tired. One of the things with Lauren is – we call her a killer. She wants to win so bad, and she’s one of the few girls – when the spotlight’s on, she’s like, ‘Yup, I want it.’ The more cameras the better.”
The win over Kellam came on the heels of a 23-3 win in five innings over Bayside on Rock North’s weekend trip to Virginia Beach with the Neshaminy softball team.
“Now the challenge is – we just went through the motions,” Engelhardt said. “Now we’re going to play a team that is one through nine legit, and they’re facing a kid that has as good a change-up as I’ve seen, including (Neshaminy ace) Amber Brugger. If I’m a betting guy, there’s very little chance we have a shot unless we put up 11 runs.”
Begg blew that theory up in a smoke in a hurry.
“Lauren came out – we threw 98 percent drop curves, and she was getting ahead in the count, and she just completely mowed them down,” Engelhardt said. “We played decent defense, but they were easy outs. These girls were not able to get ahold of the ball.
“Here’s a kid that doesn’t pitch for travel because they don’t think she’s a pitcher. I said to their coach before the game, ‘I wish I had my ace (Khantzian) because this would be a lot of fun.’ It just shows you – speed is not the most important fact. It’s spin, it’s location. Lauren’s drop curve was just moving, and we played pretty good ‘D’ and won.”
The Indians scored all four of their runs in the sixth – the big blow was a three-run blast by Julianna Shields. It was the first home run of her varsity career, and it was more than enough for Begg.
“She shut them down – they didn’t beat themselves,” Engelhardt said. “I’m just really happy for her. Lauren will do anything for us. She’ll play first, she’ll pitch, she’ll play outfield, she’ll run through a brick wall. She’ll do whatever it takes, and it was just nice to see this kid step up. You don’t find those kids these days that are just willing to do anything and everything, and they’re willing to be selfless.
“The conversation I had with Lauren before this year was – ‘You’re probably not going to make first team anything in the league because you are going to play the outfield, first base and pitch, and you might not log enough innings at one position, but you are the most important player for our team.’ She doesn’t care about that.
“It’s just like the Amanda Camps – these kids that do so much for your program and your team. What this kid did today was special and really set the tone for our season. There are so many positives for us to take away.
“I do have a special team as far as attitude this year – it’s carried over from last year.”
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This weekend’s trip to Virginia Beach for a preseason doubleheader has been in the works for a long time, and to say John Engelhardt was determined that neither rain nor a flooded outfield would prevent his team from making the trip would be a bit of an understatement.
When the CR North coach heard that the trip – which also included Neshaminy’s softball team – was in jeopardy earlier this week, he sprang into action.
“The school (in Virginia Beach) wasn’t communicating as well as Dave Chichilitti and I would have liked,” Engelhardt said. “They have an irrigation area, and they said it was leaking, so their outfield was underwater, and even if they weren’t supposed to get rain after Tuesday that their field might not be ready.”
That wasn’t exactly what Engelhardt wanted to hear.
“I can get my field ready in 48 hours at the most and the fact that each of our teams spent $6,000 to come down here,” the Indians’ coach said. “Schools are so conservative. They don’t want to say, ‘Yes, yes, we’re good,’ so they were giving your typical, ‘Well, there’s no rain today, but the field’s still wet.’
“I wanted a picture of the field, and I didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask the activities director we were talking to, so I wanted someone to take a picture of the field.”
After a visit to Google Earth, Engelhardt settled on Sal’s New York Pizza. A phone call to Sal’s offering a cash tip for a photo of the outfield didn’t net the best results.
“I got off the phone, and five minutes later, I got a call from the hotel, and they said the boiler broke, and they were moving our hotel,” the Indians’ coach said. “Then I got a call from the transportation company saying we hadn’t paid $1,700 we had to pay.
“This is a snow day, and I’m home trying come up with Plan B or Plan C. Then I got a call from a Virginia Beach number. It was the Virginia Beach Police. They said, ‘Did you just call a pizza place asking them to take a picture of a school?’”
Engelhardt cleared up the confusion, and the trip went off as planned.
“The boiler broke, we had our hotel moved, we have girls on four different floors, and today made it all worthwhile with the way the girls played against this really good team,” Engelhardt said. I’m still trying to figure out how we won because this Kellam team is legit.”
NESHAMINY 14, BAYSIDE 2
KELLAM 10, NESHAMINY 9
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