St. Viator Eclipses Kits With Late Comeback

The next total solar eclipse won’t happen for another 20 years, according to scientists.

But if you’re a fan of high school softball who watched the Evanston-Saint Viator game Monday, just hours after that celestial event, you witnessed something that was even more rare than a once or twice in a lifetime eclipse.

Consider that:

*Saint Viator used a remarkable 4 pitchers in the same game, and starter Hannah Grossman re-entered the circle twice in relief before she finally picked up the win.

*Those 4 pitchers combined to issue 14 walks and hit 3 batters.

*Evanston stranded 17 baserunners and left the bases loaded not once --- not twice --- but FIVE straight innings.

*St. Viator homered 4 times in the same inning, including 3 in a row by consecutive batters.

The confluence of all those happenings added up to a come-from-behind 11-8 victory for St. Viator in a matchup of one-win teams that was anything but a classic.

Evanston coughed up a 7-1 lead after 5 innings and fell to 1-6-1 on the season while the Lions improved to 2-10.

As shell-shocked as anyone in the ETHS home crowd, Wildkit veteran head coach Amy Gonzales admitted she’d never seen anything quite like Evanston’s latest setback. And that’s not even counting an unusual umpire’s call at first base that denied the hosts one more critical opportunity with the bases filled in the 5th inning.

More on that later.

“The thing that hurt us the most was leaving all of those runners on base,” Gonzales said. “That was really our Achilles heel today. We had runners on early, and often, and we didn’t make it happen. If we score half of those runners, then it’s a totally different game.

“When you get so many runners on base like that it’s a great situation and we have to use it to our advantage. We keep telling them that the pressure is on the pitcher and the defense, not on them. It is what it is, but we have to change our mindset in those situations. We need to put more pressure on the defense and we didn’t connect when we needed to today.”

Evanston’s offense has been dormant through the first two weeks of the 2024 campaign but showed signs of life in last Saturday’s 17-8 loss to Ridgewood. Monday, the Wildkits spent much of the first 5 innings strolling around the basepaths thanks to all of those free passes, as RBI singles by Serafina Goodwill and Sophie Berger-White in the 1st inning, a two-run double by Frances Heldt in the 4th and a bases-loaded walk to Charlie Henderson in the 5th pushed the lead to 7-1.

But that’s when the Lions roared to life against the beleaguered ETHS pitching staff. Starter Maya Nelson, who allowed only four hits in the first five innings, was yanked after Viator’s Mia Lund reached on a bunt single and Grossman homered over the left field fence to start the comeback in the 6th.

Junior Isabelle Anthony was next up in the circle and departed quickly, yielding home runs to Jillian Bollard and Katie Stevens on two of the three pitches she threw. Goodwill then allowed a two-out, two-run blast to center to No. 9 hitter Ava Moreno, a freshman, that knotted the score at 7 apiece.

The Lions weren’t finished. In the 7th, Goodwill was victimized by a couple of pop-ups that should have been caught --- one that fell for a single and another that shortstop Berger-White misplayed --- and the visitors pushed across four more runs to secure the unlikely win.

Evanston had a chance to tack on runs with the bases loaded and junior Olivia Stanczak at the plate with two outs in the 5th. The speedy Stanczak appeared to beat out a grounder to shortstop, only to be ruled out after a protest from St. Viator head coach John Scotillo.

After a consultation, the umpires ruled that Stanczak was out for “interference” because she touched the wrong base at first in the “safety (double) bag” setup there.

Gonzales disagreed with that decision.

“He said Olivia stepped on the white base, not the orange (safety) one. He also said she was only out because of the appeal (by Scotillo), that it’s not a call he would have made otherwise,” said a mystified ETHS coach. “That was weird. What umpire looks at that? And it was a big call because it took away a run. She never interfered with the first baseman making the play, never made contact, so how is that interference?

“I thought our pitchers were fine today. St. Viator just connected when they needed to, and we didn’t.”