Staub heard her teammates too. Carrying two strikes with Rachel Teti and Alex Aburto occupying first and second base, respectively, she simply wanted to make contact. Redirecting a Brooke Stambaugh offering into dead center, drove in both runners for the victory.
‘‘One thing about our team is we always get along,” Staub said. ‘‘We’re all good friends with each other and we never back down.”
The Lancers trailed 2-0 in the bottom of the fifth. With two outs, Staub sent a missile, which due to the fact that Linganore’s field is without a fence, rolled unhindered for what seemed like an eternity for an RBI triple. She finished 3-for-4 with a pair of triples and three runs batted in.
Kristen Fraley allowed seven hits and two earned runs in a complete game while also collecting a pair of singles. Left-fielder Alli Chew finished with three hits.
Century (0-2) did most of the little things right. The Knights backed up throws, hit the cutoff player, picked off runners and laid down precise bunts in critical situations. Right fielder Christa Giannacci snagged an errant pickoff attempt 10 yards behind first base in fifth to halt advancing runners. After a botched play at first in the bottom of the sixth First baseman Anna Struhar tossed a cross-diamond strike to third baseman Morgan Wheeler who tagged out Chew at third. Offensively, the Knights’ Mary Hartman advanced Megan Clements, who eventually scored, with a textbook bunt in the fifth.
‘‘We’ve been hitting that in practice every single day,” Century head coach Jay Seaborg said. ‘‘We emphasis doing those things every single day. We spend a half-hour at practice just doing things like backing up and what we have to do now is get some hits.”
Stambaugh tossed a complete game, recording 11 strikeouts. Emily McFarland had a pair of RBI.
Tuesday’s contest was the type of hard fought nail biter you’d expect from the defending Class 2A (Century) and Class 3A (Linganore) West Region Champions. It’s the type of win that can help propel a team to even loftier heights further down the road.
‘‘This is very important,” Poffinberger said. ‘‘We all know we have the capability. The question was can we mesh and player together. We obviously proved it in our first game so that’s big for us.”
