When Carmel beat Nazareth 9-2 on Monday, the result extended one Carmel streak and snapped another.
The victory was the seventh straight for the Corsairs, but the score snapped a six-game streak in which Carmel had scored 10 or more runs.
Since losing 10-6 to Class 4A power Warren on April 11, Carmel had won games 13-0, 10-0, 10-2, 22-5, 12-2 and 13-2. The Corsairs will get another shot at Nazareth on Wednesday.
Currently, Carmel (17-2) is 5-0 in the East Suburban Catholic, but has yet to face any of the league’s other powers. That includes Marist (8-0, May 16 doubleheader), Marian Catholic (6-1, May 23 doubleheader), Providence (8-3, May 9 doubleheader), and Benet (6-2, May 4 and 6).
Marist has scored 105 runs in its eight league games and Marian Catholic 54 in seven, so clearly there is no shortage of hitting at the top end of the ESCC.
And Carmel certainly can hit with them all.
As of last week, the Corsairs had a .413 team batting average and three players hitting above .500, and coach Jason Raymond said that “when we don’t score double digits, we start to wonder what’s wrong. I know it’s not fair to the girls, but that’s when we start looking for ways to tweak.”
More Top Picks Abdominal Migraine In Children What Parents Miss
Through 15 games, Jenny Behan, a senior who plays third base, led the team with a .596 average, nine home runs and 32 runs batted in. Amanda Elert, a junior catcher, was hitting .518 with five round trippers and 27 RBIs. Junior pitcher Claire Petrus was batting .500 with five homers and 26 RBIs.
Behan, who plans to play for James Madison next year, said she does not mind the pressure and piles expectations on herself.
“It’s really good that they do it,” Behan said of the coaches’ heightened expectations. “It gets us ready for the tougher competition we’ll have as we go deeper into the postseason. I want to end my senior year going downstate, and I feel good about doing that.”
The biggest improvement among Carmel’s three .500 hitters has come from the leftside-hitting Petrus, who hit .309 last season. She credited the jump to repetition in the batting cages during the offseason.
Raymond pointed to her work ethic.
“She’s a workout fanatic,” Raymond said. “She spends lots of time in the gym. She leads everyone when it comes to conditioning.”
Petrus also worked with a private hitting coach during the offseason to alter her technique.
“I started going straight for the ball instead of pulling out and dropping my hands like I used to,” Petrus said.
Petrus was the winning pitcher in Monday’s victory, working all seven innings and allowing one earned run while striking out three. Emma Bartz had a triple and homer and drove in three, and Elert added two doubles and two RBIs.
Elert, who hit .410 as a freshman and missed last season with an ACL injury, has had to deal with physical therapy as well as practice.
“I had a lot of rehab and over the summer I put in a lot of time to get my swing back,” Elert said. “I spent a lot of time in the cage and I finally feel normal again. I had to swing and swing and swing.”
Behan, who had 45 career home runs for the Corsairs going into last weekend, said the team batting average takes pressure off her. She credited the reduced stress as one of the reasons for her success at the plate.
“When you have a lineup like this you don’t have so much weight on your shoulders,” Behan said. “We have a really good chemistry this year.”
This is the first year since the advent of four-class softball in the playoffs that Carmel will play in 3A rather than 4A.
The Corsairs will be in the Grayslake Central, where they likely will be a top-three seed along with Wauconda and Antioch.
Wauconda has a great pitcher in Illinois-Chicago commit Kayla Wedl, and Antioch (16-3) bashes the ball (194 runs in 19 games) almost as well as Carmel.
Carmel doesn’t play Wauconda or Antioch this season. One of Carmel’s losses was 10-6 to Warren. Antioch lost to Warren 8-3.
Freelancer Steve Sadin contributed to this report