Softball: Andrew tunes up for playoffs with win over Oak Forest

Updated: May 21, 2012 8:34PM

It wasn’t exactly punishment, but a loss Friday to Richards resulted in Andrew’s graduated seniors having to come in during everybody else’s school day Monday to do some extra hitting.

“We needed it,” Shannon Rust said. “We’re getting into playoff season and we need to get ready for those situations.”

It helped, to say the least.

In a final tuneup for the postseason, the Thunderbolts put the ball in play early and often to beat Oak Forest 11-0 in five innings.

Rust contributed a triple, Kelly Christner a double and Caitlyn Migawa two singles for Andrew (29-5). Brooke Hofer threw four scoreless innings, Katie Christner one.

Oak Forest (22-12), which committed six errors, had just two hits, one each by Kylie Powers and Shannon Coyle.

What appeared to be a good match-up between champions of the SouthWest Suburban Red and South Suburban Blue was not to be.

Three of the first four Andrew batters reached base on Oak Forest errors. Two more miscues would follow during a six-run start by the T-bolts.

Andrew put the game in slaughter-rule territory with a five-spot in the third that featured a triple by Rust and back-to-back RBI singles by Migawa and Gabby D’Oronzo.

It was far from how Oak Forest looked during a 4-2 victory Thursday over Lemont.

“We play a game like that and then we come out here and do this,” Bengals coach Katie Dammer said. “It’s not exactly the energy we want going into the regionals.

“It’s one and done from here on out. The next three days we’ve really got to focus. We can’t have the roller-coaster effect going on, or we’ll be out faster than we can blink.”

For Andrew, was a nice bounce-back from the loss to Richards.

“We needed that (the loss) before the playoffs and then this game, too, to get our momentum going,” Rust said. “We needed to know that we could be beat, so that we come out even harder when we get into the playoffs.”

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