Green Wave rounding into form

Updated: May 16, 2011 7:50PM

When St. Edward’s softball team owned an 0-6 record to start coach Jaci Corn’s first season, no one panicked.

Now that St. Edward has a 15-9 record and top seed in the Westminster Christian Class 2A Regional tournament, no one with the Green Wave is feeling overconfident, either. They’ll just continue taking their mature, disciplined approach and hope for the type of results they’ve been getting while going 15-3 over the last 18 contests.

“We’re not looking ahead,” Corn said. “That’s not the way we’ve played. We’re just looking to play our game, and as long as we keep playing our game, we know we’ll keep improving and have a great shot at going somewhere in the tournament.”

St. Edward opens play in the tournament at 4 p.m. Tuesday against fourth-seeded Willows Academy of the Independent School League at Jockey Park in East Dundee. Third-seeded Westminster (8-18) plays second-seeded Northeast Athletic Conference champion Luther North (18-2) following the Green Wave’s game. The winner of the regional earns a spot in the Lisle Sectional.

St. Edward made major strides toward reaching this point merely by getting back two injured players. Maddie Kerr was coming off a bone fracture during basketball and Kelsey Richmond a knee sprain. The two came back into the lineup full time shortly after the Green Wave’s fortunes changed in April, and the momentum has continued to build.

“We had some inexperienced varsity players in roles they weren’t used to when those two were hurt, but those girls have grown into their roles and Maddie and Kelsey have come back strong,” Corn said.

The Green Wave offense has been its big strength most of the year, and that starts with Tarah McShane. She has more than half the team’s 12 home runs (7) and her 38 RBI are twice as many as the next most. McShane owns a .614 on-base percentage and 1.167 slugging percentage.

“Tarah has been our rock,” Corn said. “She is consistent of all aspects of her game: offensively, defensively, and leadership.”

Leadoff hitter Kali Kossakowski has “set the tempo perfectly,” Corn said, with a .431 batting average and .576 on-base percentage.

“With the top of our lineup, and Kali, Tara, Ashley Gradishar, Sarah Field, Kelsey, Veronica Rolando and Maddie, we’ve been producing consistently on offense,” Corn said.

Field has done in the pitching circle what McShane has done with her bat. With a 13-9 record, she went over 130 innings in the regular-season finale.

If there’s a concern, it’s defense.

“Defensively, errors are going to happen every game, I tell them,” Corn said. “It’s a matter of overcoming them and how you let it affect you. Sometimes they have a tendency to get down on themselves and not bounce back from errors. They’ve got to have confidence and have to go into regional knowing if an error happens, we’ll overcome it.”

The Green Wave hopes its stronger schedule proves a big factor against teams in this regional who played mostly smaller schools.

“We played as many Class 2A teams as we did 4A teams,” Corn said.

Westminster just lost two games by the 10-run rule last week to its semifinal opponent, a team that lost only once in Northeast Athletic Conference play.

“We didn’t feel like it was a team that overwhelmed us,” Westminster coach John Wedell said. “It was more a problem with what we did. We just didn’t play well, didn’t pitch well, didn’t play defense that well.”

Like St. Edward, Westminster struggled early but Wedell, who is in his first year, turned to freshman Rachel Fugiel (4-7) as a pitcher and it helped build for the future as well as stabilize the defense this season.

“She didn’t really pitch until six weeks ago but has picked it up quickly,” Wedell said. The Warriors have a young team with five freshmen and three sophomores, but senior Katie Moeller and junior Porsche Griggs, along with Fugiel, have been key in sparking the offense.

Luther North averaged 13 runs a game and went 16-0 before losing its only two games, 3-1 to IMSA and 2-1 to Northside College Prep.

At Genoa-Kingston

The Big Northern West champion Cogs (24-1), fresh off their first conference title since 2007, host their own regional as top seed. Pitcher Ashley Miller (15-1) has led the way. G-K opens at 4:30 Tuesday against the winner of Monday’s Byron-Winnebago contest. Forreston is the second seed in that regional.

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