2018 SOFTBALL SECTION X CHAMPIONS 14-2 NN

St. Lawrence Central softball team pressured its way to a third straight Section 10 Class C title on Thursday. “We didn’t a chance to play them this year like we usually do because of the terrible weather but we knew they had some decent pitching. Our game plan was to put the ball in play as much as possible and make things happen,” said coach Tim Brown after the Lady Larries pulled away to a 14-2 win over Norwood-Norfolk at the SUNY Potsdam diamond in a game where they took full advantage of a dozen Lady Flyer errors that led to 12 unearned runs. “It definitely wasn’t pretty. We showed that we still have a few things to clean up defensively,” he added. “We were happy with the way we got the bat on the ball as team and Makiah (Ramsdell) pitched another great game for us.” Ramsdell survived a fourth-inning surge by the Lady Flyers to earn the complete-game victory, striking out 12 and walking two while allowing just two hits. Grace Furnace went the distance in taking the loss, notching five strikeouts while walking four. “Grace pitched very well but we didn’t give her a lot of support in the field,” acknowledged N-N coach Becky Byrns. “Still, I thought our girls showed a lot of heart. We haven’t really seen pitching like what we saw today but we were able to put together a couple runs and we didn’t totally roll over,” she added. “The errors were definitely a huge difference.” The Lady Larries (14-2) will now get set to host the Section 2 champion next Thursday back at the SUNY Potsdam campus starting at 5 p.m. In the win over the Lady Flyers (12-6), the teams were scoreless through the first two innings with Ramsdell fanning five of the six batters she faced before the Lady Larries took control with a seven-run barrage in the bottom of the third where they made the most of three walks, two hit-batters, four errors and an RBI-single by senior Sydney Collins. N-N regrouped to score in its next at-bat when Vanessa Prashaw singled up the middle to break up the perfect game, stole second and moved to third on a wild pitch after Chloe Harvey had drawn a one-out walk. Two batters later, Ashley Powell hit a slow roller up the firstbase line and was initially tagged out but the ball popped out of the defender’s glove and both Prashaw and Harvey were able to come around and score. Miranda Smith followed with what proved to be the final N-N hit before Ramsdell settled down and ended the inning with her ninth strikeout. Payton Douglas had two hits and scored a run in the balanced SLC effort. Eliza Sullivan was 2-4 with two RBI and two runs scored. Collins came around to score a pair of runs while Cailey Hewlett singled and scored four times and Leah Francis drilled a two-run singled and scored a run.