Lockport coach Marissa Chovanec picked the wrong game to miss.
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Absent for the second time in eight years as head coach, Chovanec was at an airport in Tennessee on Thursday when her assistant coach, Rachel Gensch, sent her a text message to inform her of the Porters’ 8-7 upset of top-ranked Sandburg.
The reply from the wedding-bound Chovanec read: “I am jumping up and down and screaming at the airport.”
Chovanec’s team is the first in Illinois to defeat the Eagles (27-2, 6-1) this season, but it didn’t come easy.
The Porters (16-5, 6-1) started to figure out Eagles ace Brittany Gardner in the third inning. The senior lefty gave up a two-run single to Jessica Rourke (2-for-3, 2B, 3 RBIs) and an RBI single to Sara Daley (2-for-3) and three runs and seven hits overall before she was relieved by Lora Olson with two outs in the third.
Olson struck out the first batter she faced to end the inning. That was last out she recorded. The Porters pounded the junior for five hits — four for extra bases – in the fourth inning to increase their lead to 8-0 and force Gardner back into the pitcher’s circle.
“Lockport has always been good and you knew that it was going to be a good game,” said Gardner, who held the Porters down the rest of the way.
Porters starter Kelly Bowler retired 11 in a row but got into trouble in the fifth, when six hits resulted in five runs. A key running mistake, though, came back to haunt them
Eagles coach Jim Fabianski waved a second runner in on a two-out RBI single by Morgan Biel, but the pinch-runner held up on her own and was stranded at third. The Eagles scored two more in the sixth on an RBI double by Emma Jarrell (2-for-3, 2 RBIs) and a solo home run from Nicole Richards (2-for-3).
Bowler was relieved in the fifth but re-entered in the sixth. She retired the Eagles in order, including a game-ending strikeout.
“All I can hear was all of my teammates yelling to me,” said Bowler, who got the win. “I knew I had to hold them in that last inning.”
Player of the game:
Jessica Rourke, Lockport, 2-for-3, 2B, 3 RBIs.
Key performers:
Lockport — Audrey Mintari, 2-for-3, 3B, 2 R, 2 RBIs; Sara Daley, 2-for-3, RBI; Sam DeMasi, 2-for-4, 2 R. Sandburg — Nicole Richards, 2-for-3, HR, 2 R; Emma Jarrell, 2-for-3, 2B, R, 2 RBIs; Amanda Grigsby, 2-for-4, R, RBI