SPoRTSBEAT BY PETER JAKEY: Posen?s goal is to maintain focus
The Posen softball team had a near perfect afternoon in coming away with a mid-season sweep of their biggest league rival, Hillman. The Vikings dominated every facet of the game against the Tigers and left their head coach Curt Tebo searching for answers as to what his team needs to do to win. Hillman won two of three games in 2005, including a 14-inning district championship game at Onaway. The Vikings have turned the tide in ?06 and are 3-0 against Hillman. Tebo has four weeks to solve some of his team?s problems, while Posen softball coach Glenn Budnick has the pleasant challenge of trying to maintain focus.
If Budnick?s players come into every game and play at the level displayed Monday, they should roll to a fifth straight North Star League title. The Vikings stung the ball against whoever was on the mound, many different players made the routine and tough plays in the field, and the pitching from senior ace Beth Julian has been everything that has been expected of her and more.
UNLIKE THE first meeting between the schools in April, senior Jessica Tebo took the mound for the Tigers as the starter. The Posen batters were not intimidated with ?Big Bad Tebo? throwing. >From top to bottom, the Vikings hit the ball through the infield, at players, down the line, and to the fence. The highlight of the afternoon came from a blast by junior Roxann Hincka, who put a charge in a ball to deep center field for a triple and barely missed a home run. Hincka hits in the lower part of the lineup, meaning there are no easy outs in the Vikings batting order. The defense is living up to its early season billing. There was only one error in 12 innings of action. Freshman Christina Bednarski has been steady in rightfield, an always-busy position in softball. Senior Amanda Pieczynski and her junior sister Megan plug the middle at short and second. Amanda Pieczynski has enough quickness that she can run over to the bag and make the play at first. A couple of times it looked like she was going to do just that, but instead flipped the ball over to Hincka?s outstretched glove. She made a key play late in game two when she ran down a ball in foul territory, that quite frankly, not many athletes other than an all-state sprinter would make.
Sophomore Ashley Sobek also made an important play in centerfield in game two, running down a sinking fly ball in shallow right center. She caught the ball and got it back into the infield. THE DEFENSE is fundamentally sound, but hitting the ball into play is only half the battle, as the Hillman batters were trying to figure out what Julian was doing on the mound. Coach Tebo said Julian ?kept us off balance. We just could not get anything going today. We are going to work hard on getting better pitching, and to getting our bats around.? With the Hillman games now in the win column, the focus is now on game one at Arenac East
?You can?t sweep unless you get the first one,? said Budnick. ?We have to go in there focusing on the first game. ?The fact of the matter is, we have 15 ball games left after today, so regardless of what happens, it is the midway point of our season. There is a lot of softball left, and we just have to take it one game at a time, and do not take anyone for granted.? The coach also reminded the girls the day before practice that there would be no hardware given out at the end of the day, although it is a huge step forward in keeping the streak of consecutive league titles alive.
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Sports question to ponder: Who will lose their job first? Tiger closer Todd Jones or Kansas City manager Buddy Bell. Flip a coin if you want to know the answer to that one.