Eastchester Softball Falls One Win Short of Sectionals

After a long and successful season that saw them come within one win of the Section 4 Sectional Tournament, Eastchester’s 11/12 softball team played their last game of the year Friday afternoon, falling for the second night in a row to the team from Kensico. Less than 24-hours after Kensico defeated them by a score of 7-4 – forcing Friday’s win-or-go-home District 20 championship finale – Eastchester once again fell behind early and was never able to climb back into the game.

Capitalizing on a number of early errors on Eastchester’s part, Kensico raced out to a 4-0 first-inning lead Friday afternoon, and never looked back. Kensico’s Kaylie Dymek pitched a brilliant game, getting ahead of the opposing batters early and often, and never allowing Eastchester to build any kind of rally. She was also backed up by a sublime defensive unit that robbed Eastchester of a number of extra-base hits. Kensico scored its other three runs in the top of the third inning, again after taking advantage of some defensive blunders by Eastchester. Eastchester’s Kassie McGrath settled into a nice rhyme after a shaky first few innings, allowing no hits in the last three frames, but it was too little, too late as Eastchester’s batters were never able to get on track. The team’s only run came in the bottom of the first inning on an RBI groundout by Amanda Cermele.

After the game, Eastchester Assistant Coach Tiso looked back on a very successful season and a group of girls the coaching staff will undoubtedly miss.

“Most of these girls we’ve been coach since they’ve been little kids,” Tiso said. “A nicer group of girls I’ve never coached, and that’s the honest truth. I thoroughly enjoyed every day that we had with them. I couldn’t wait to get out of work and get on the field with them. I’m proud of them.”

Although Tiso felt his team did not play anywhere close to its best in the last few days of the season, he admitted Kensico was simply the better team when the two met this week, and said there was nothing else to do but “extend your hand to them.”

“We felt like we were better on paper, but at the end of the day Kensico played two better games than we did,” Tiso said. “What they won today was well deserved. Hat’s off to them.”

For Kensico, Friday’s win secures them a fourth straight trip to the sectional tournament, something Head Coach Tony Rizzuto knew wouldn’t come easily against such a talented and familiar team as Eastchester.

 “We’ve been rivals with them for a long time,” Rizzuto said. “It’s literally Red Sox-Yankees. We know them, they know us; it’s whoever comes in and is ready to play that day. They’re solid fundamentally, so we knew we weren’t going to get away with anything. It could have been anybody.”

Despite Friday night’s disappointment, Tiso refused to focus on the missed opportunities, instead looking ahead to next year and pledging to be back even stronger.

“Our twelve-year-olds never won anything, and we really wanted it that badly,” he said. “Our evelen-year-olds are going to come back next year and we’re going to try to win it for them.”