Laurence Manning rides defense, Kosinski's pitching to 2-0 softball win over Williamsburg
Stallions eighth-grade pitcher Abby Ward sets school record for strikeouts in a season
Kingstree – After falling to Pee Dee Academy 9-1 on Thursday, Laurence Manning Academy softball head coach Buddy Truett was interested to see how his team would respond on Friday against Williamsburg Academy.
The Lady ‘Cats kicked the ball around defensively against PDA, but that wasn’t the case against the Stallions. LMA had just one error and made several nice plays to back up the 6-hit pitching of junior Laini Kosinski in a 2-0 win at Shane Mouzon Memorial Field.
“She came out here and did what we normally expect her to do,” Truett said of Kosinski, who struck out five and didn’t walk a batter while scattering the six hits. “She gets ground balls, pop-ups. It was a lot better outing than last night when we lost to Pee Dee, We had a bunch of errors in that game, and you can't give away errors like that.
“They bounced back defensively. Normally all year that's what we've been basing this on. We've been pretty solid defensively, so when we make errors it magnifies. It was a blessing to come back and play the game that we normally play.”
Kosinski never allowed more than one hit in an inning. The only inning in which Williamsburg had more than one runner on base came in the fourth when Abby Ward doubled with one out and Brayleigh Matthews was hit by a pitch. They moved up a base on a wild pitch but were left stranded when Laurence Manning shortstop Lilly Welborn made a diving catch on a humpback liner and made a nice play on a slow grounder to end the inning.
Ward, who was 2-for-3, tripled with one out in the sixth. Matthews hit a flyball to shallow center field that the Lady ‘Cats Lyza Pricklemeyer grabbed for the second out. Ward tagged up on the play and Pricklemeyer threw to catcher Hailey Truett for the inning-ending double play. That was the second of two inning-ending twin killings for LMA.
Ward, the Stallions’ eighth-grade starting pitcher, had a tremendous game in the circle. She allowed just two hits and struck out seven batters, giving her 218 this season, a school record. That’s quite an accomplishment considering the person she passed for the record is her successor, Nealy Lamb, who is currently playing for NCAA Division I Charleston Southern.
“Abby's only a 13-year-old eighth-grader,” said WA head coach Pat Wildes, whose team is now 11-11 on the season. “She moved up from JV (junior varsity) last year, and she's carried the whole load. She's the only pitcher that we've got.
“She's a hard worker. She lives behind me, so I know them really well. She plays a lot of travel ball, she has a pitching coach, she practices all the time. She and her dad get out there and they continue to work.”
Williamsburg did make seven errors behind Ward and LMA’s two hits each scored a runner who had reached on an error. In the top of the third, Ashley Rae Hodge reached on a 1-out error and was sacrificed to second on a bunt by Welborn. Pricklemeyer punched a single into left field to score Hodge for the 1-0 lead.
Laurence Manning’s other run came in the fourth. Hailey Truett reached on an error to start the inning and was replaced by courtesy runner Karly Bjork. She came around to score on a 1-out triple by Maggie Welch.
LMA improved to 11-4 with the victory. Coach Truett believes his team is starting to come back around after struggling at the plate the last few games.
“I think we started off real hot=, but right now we've got a few second guessing themselves at the plate a little bit,” he said. “So our bats have kind of cooled off a little bit from the start. We're slowly climbing back hitting the ball.”
Laurence Manning closes out the regular season with games against Wilson Hall, the team it has lost to in the AAAA and AAA state championship series the last two years but beat earlier this season, defending AAA runner-up Orangeburg Prep, Hammond and defending AAA state champion Pee Dee.
Eighth-grade second baseman Riley McCrea had two hits, while senior shortstop Carmela Jacobs and freshman leftfielder Perry Wise each had a hit. Wise was playing in place of normal leadoff hitter and sophomore leftfielder Audrey Wadford, who had to miss the game.
Wildes is pleased with the season to date considering he lost five senior starters from last year’s squad, which reached the championship round of its bracket in the AAA state tournament.
“I'm playing with a bunch of eighth-graders,” Wildes said. “I graduated five seniors last year, so we're rebuilding even though we’re graduating five seniors this year.
“Coming into this year being as young as we were going to be, I thought it was going to be a rebuilding season, but hey, we're the conference (Region 2) runners-up this year. They've exceeded my expectations, in the talent level and just becoming overall ball players. We started off slow, but we've grown the whole time.”
The rest of the starting lineup has senior Jana McConnell in center, senior Allie McFadden catching, eighth-grader Maggie Jones at third base, and freshman Kathryn Holliday in right. The other members of the team are senior Anna Louise McKenzie and senior Danielle Alston.
The Stallions have games against Marlboro Academy and Lee Academy left in the regular season. Wildes likes where his team stands as the postseason draws near.
“We can play with anybody when they play,” he said. “We played really well tonight. That's a AAAA school with a lot of talent.”
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