LYONS — For 35 pitches from Archbishop Ryan’s Kerri Dadalski, Lower Dauphin’s bats were silenced. Ava Bottiglia was doing the same to the Ragdolls. It was a game of shutout chicken.
Until the top of the fourth inning.
“I’ll be honest with you, I thought it was going to be tighter longer,” Lower Dauphin head coach Steve Alcorn said.
Bu the Falcons cracked the game open with catcher Shelby Alcorn’s two-RBI double in the fourth. Bottiglia completed a seven-inning no-hitter and Lower Dauphin made the breakout frame standup, adding an insurance run in the sixth to beat Archbishop Ryan 4-0 in the PIAA AAAA softball quarterfinals at Lyons Field Friday night.
Lower Dauphin will meet Parkland at 1 p.m. on Monday at Lyons Field.
“I don’t think any of us are ready to let go of our seniors yet,” Shelby said.
“Avacado” throws a no-no
Bottiglia owned the inevitable pitchers duel from the outset, striking out Archbisop Ryan’s first two batters.
Half of Archbishop Ryan’s at-bats on the day ended in strikeouts. Only one of the 11 went down looking. The Ragdolls were simply off-balance for all 11 innings.
“When she’s on point and our hitting’s on point, we’re pretty much there,” the catcher, Alcorn said.
So when Archbishop Ryan put balls in play, they were largely grounders that Kaylee Stoner, Emily Lingle and Madison Lilliock put out with ease. Only four of the 21 outs induced by Bottiglia were flyouts.
Fittingly the last was one of them. Bottiglia made sureshe finished the pitcher’s duel at the plate.
With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Dadalski walked into the batter’s box. Alcorn, the catcher, called an infield conference to give her pitcher, who her teammates call “Avacodo,” a breather.
“I told the girls just to keep backing up Ava like they were doing,” Alcorn said. “And just breathe. And we just had to get one more out and were going to win it.”
The first pitch out of the huddle was a strike. Bottiglia said afterward she knew she needed to throw a pitch with some spin to get the out. And like she had done all afternoon, she got it, forcing a flyout to Alcorn.
“We all have trust in each other and I think that’s how we got this far,” Bottiglia said.
Alcorn clutch, too
Bottiglia only let two batters reach base — both on walks. Alcorn erased the first when she caught Sarah Ostaszewski stealing second.
“After I threw that girl out I was like ‘All right, this is going to be a really good game,” Alcorn said.
She was right.
The game was still deadlocked in the bottom of the third inning. Bottiglia had just struck out another batter. On the very next pitch Archbishop Ryan’s Megan Ryan sliced a short pop-up into foul territory, about halfway between third base and home.
Diving on two knees, Alcorn made the out. It was the second of five she recorded in the win.
She made sure it was a win when she came to bat in the top of the fourth with runners on second and third. Her dad, the coach, told her not to let Dadalski sneak anything by her.
“She smoked that ball,” the older Alcorn said. “… I think that was a demoralizing blow.”
Even if it wasn’t, Lower Dauphin closed out the game with errorless fielding.
“Today we played perfect softball,” he said. “In just about every way imaginable we played perfect softball.”