A Missed Chance: Comets Top Lady Cougars to Preserve First Place

It was two and a half weeks ago that the Lady Cougars traveled to Hicksville and topped the conference leading Comets by the score of 9-3.

And the Comets were excited to return the favor when they traveled to Kennedy High School on Saturday morning. They were off and running from the get go as Hicksville snapped the Cougars six-game winning streak and increased its lead in the conference to two games with a 15-4 victory.

It was Samantha Finkel who got the start for the Cougars on April 6, but she would not fare as well on this day. The first inning started with back-to-back base runners, and then Kelly Moorehead crushed a three-run homer, which was the beginning of a monster day for her.

"I wasn't really thinking about anything," Moorehead said. "I just wanted to hit it."

Moorehead went 4-for-5 with two homers and career high seven RBIs, and she fell just a double away from completing the cycle.

Kennedy (8-3, 8-2) did a nice job responding when they got a chance to bat. After two were out, Gabbi Calia singled to score Sarah Siegler for the first Cougars run. Unfortunately for Kennedy, they left the bases loaded, and stranded runners became a theme of the morning. They ended up leaving 10 runners on base on the day.

"We knew that the lineup was going to be different today," Kennedy coach Katie Speiss said. "We did hit the ball, but not as much as we thought we could have."

Hicksville (12-2, 11-1) continued their relentless attack in the second as Gene Caputo singled to right with a runner on, but the ball snuck under Alex Kushner's glove and both runners scored on the play, and the Comets never looked back.

In the third, Moorehead would hit her second homer of the game, and this time, the bases were loaded. Danielle Delligatti followed suit with a two-run homer of her own, and coach Rich Hinnerschiett was proud of how his team kept the pressure on.

"We played really well," Hinnerschiett said. "This is the way I expect them to play, and it took a couple of weeks for us to get going, but I am happy with where we are."

Kennedy scored another run in the third when Steph Bauman scored on an error, but the Cougars could not muster a big inning. They added two more runs in the fourth on a Brittany Venezia two-run shot to trim the lead to 12-4, but it just wasn't enough to make the game close.

"It was just my kind of pitch," Venezia said. "I thought she was going to catch it, but it just went over her head."

Hicksville would add three more runs before all was done, and it was thanks to Delligatti. In the fifth, she knocked in a run with a double, and then her offensive explosion concluded in the seventh when she hit her second two-run homer of the game.

"To the team this win means a lot," Delligatti said. "The first time we came out here we lost pretty badly. We knew we had to play hard and do better."

Another Cougars player that had a nice game was Heather Hulkower.  She had been having a rough time, but she was able to go 3-for-4 on the day, and that was surely a good sign for her.

"It was definitely a relief," Hulkower said. "I have been slumping and pulling the ball a lot, so it's nice to be able to get a couple of hits."

Kennedy will look to rebound when they host Uniondale at 4:30 p.m. today.