Central uses complete aresenal to beat Latin America
By John Denny
Staff Reporter

Norelis Ortiz (3) tries to head off Central's Ashleigh Bousquet (4) in Central's 10-0 victory over Latin America. Photo by RUSLANA LAMBERT

They scored only one run on four hits in 1-0 win over USA East (Pawcatuck, CT) on Aug. 6, so Manager Andy Bozman jostled the batting order in hopes to ignite his team’s slumbering bats and, sure enough, it worked. They beat up Latin America’s starting pitcher Nicole Marquez for 13 hits while stranding only four runners all game.

“We’ve been slumping a little bit lately so I shuffled them around [in the batting order] a little bit and moved Lexi Czarnecki up to the third spot, moved Ashlee Smith down to the fifth spot and moved Santana [Bozman] down to the eighth spot to take some of the pressure off them,” Bozman said.

Smith and Bozman combined for five strikeouts in six at-bats against USA East, but bounced back in a big way in the win over Latin America. Smith went 4-4 with two RBI and a double and Bozman went 2-4 and led off the top of the second with a solo homerun over the right-centerfield fence to extend their lead to 4-0.

USA Central was on top of Marquez from the start, and took an early 3-0 first inning lead behind three singles and heads-up base running. Ashleigh Bousquet led off with an opposite field single and motored to third on a booted ground ball hit by her twin, Alex on the next at-bat giving them runners on the corners and no outs. Ashleigh scored on the next pitch — a past pitch to Czarnecki which Alex took advantage of by racing around to third from first. Czarnecki plated Alex, giving them a 2-0 lead on a sacrifice fly to deep left field. Starting pitcher Sam DeFord capped the inning with a RBI single down the third baseline scoring Smith who’d moved into scoring position by stealing second base after reaching base on a single up the middle.

“We had a game plan going into the game and we knew we had to score early,” Bozman said. “We didn’t do everything we wanted, but once you get those girls on base it’s hard to stop them.”

The score remained idle after the fourth inning behind strong pitching by both teams until USA Central exploded and batted around the order scoring the final six runs on six hits in the top of the seventh. Ashleigh Bousquet and Smith score two runners apiece on a single and double, respectively. Alex Bousquet and DeFord tacked on the final two runs on 6-4 fielder’s choice and single.

Defensively, USA Central couldn’t have done better. DeFord, winning pitcher Olivia Findley and Kayla Noble combined for three, three-up, three-down innings and a four-hit shutout, while fanning seven. And the infield devoured everything that came their way.

“Defensively, I feel we have one of the better teams playing at this age level,” Bozman boasted.

“Our strength [so far] has been our defense and our pitching,” he added.

The win over Latin America extended their World Series tournament record to 3-0, but also maintained another achievement: 19 innings of not allowing a run.

“That’s their goal,” Bozman said. “They want to shut everyone out.”