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Bulldogs beat Seals for 3rd time to advance

TURBOTVILLE — If a team is going to successfully defend its district championship from the previous year, the first step is to win the initial game of the current tournament.

Saturday afternoon at the Moser Complex, Jersey Shore took that first step as it shook off a sluggish start to finish strong and handle Selinsgrove, 7-3, to advance to the Class AAAA title game.

For Shore, the win completed the hat trick over the Seals as it previously owned decisions of 16-11 and 10-0 over their PHAC opponents during the regular season. However, as for the sluggish start, it might have been partially due to the Bulldogs sleep-walking through the first three-plus innings after Prom Night 2019, before turning on the jets down the stretch to take care of business.

“We weren’t sure what we were going to get with it being prom night last night,” said Shore coach Randy Smith. “I told these guys that when the playoffs come around, you can’t rely on the fact that we already beat them twice. I warned them about taking them (Seals) for granted because they have a lot of good sticks. The bottom line is that we didn’t play sharp today, but in the end, we got the job done.”

Knowing that they scored a total of 26 runs in the two victories over the Seals in the regular season might have had Jersey Shore a little anxious at the plate.

“We were anxious at the start, going out of the zone to try and hit the ball,” said Smith. “When we settled down we got pitches to hit.”

Smith’s feeling about his players being a little jumpy at the plate was well-founded as they came up with eight of their nine hits and scored all seven of their runs in the final five innings after settling down.

For most of the 2019 regular season, the Bulldogs rode the left arm of Kylie Russell and things were no different in Saturday’s game.

Russell worked seven innings, scattering seven hits while allowing three runs. Mixing her pitches throughout, Russell struck out seven Seal batters while only issuing one base on balls.

“Kylie (Russell) threw a heck of a game,” Smith said. “She gets the ball and she just gets right back to it. She doesn’t let anything rattle her and she is always ready to go. She was like that last year and she is like that again this year. She is focused and determined and when she gets in that circle she is ready to go.”

While Russell was controlling matters in the circle, her teammates backed her with a couple of nice defensive plays.

With Shore holding a slim 4-3 lead in the fifth inning, Carolyn Wacker, a freshman who was pressed into a starting role in the absence of Shore’s starting second baseman, might have saved a lot of problems for Shore when she extended to snare a line drove off the bat of Kayla Shrawder and threw behind Elise Hessek for an inning-ending double play.

“We had to go without our starting second baseman today,” said Smith. “Carolyn (Wacker) is only a freshman, but she stepped in and did an outstanding job. She has played well all season for us.”

Not only did Wacker flash some leather at the Seals, she also finished with two hits while scoring a pair of runs for the Bulldogs in her district debut.

“She makes good contact with the ball and like I said before, she has played well for us all year.”

In addition to Wacker’s two runs scored, Lexi Schuler scored Shore’s first run and later drove in one, while Hailey Stetts doubled and later scored to give Shore a 3-2 lead after three innings.

Selinsgrove scored its third and final run of the game to tie the score at 3-all, but that is when the Bulldogs put things in high gear to score the final four runs of the game down the stretch for the win.

Wacker singled and scored the first of her two runs for a 4-3 Shore lead before the Bulldogs scored three runs in the final two innings for some insurance.

Maddie Herman started the late-inning scoring for Shore when she belted a no-doubt-about-it solo home run to left-center.

Closing things out for Shore in the bottom of the sixth was Wacker with a single and run scored before Hailey Stetts reached on a Seal error and later scored on a wild pitch to set the final.

With the win, the Bulldogs advance to the district final where they will play Mifflinburg on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. at the Moser Complex.

Shore and Mifflinburg split a pair of regular season meetings. The Bulldogs won the first encounter, 7-2, before the Wildcats blanked Shore, 7-0, in the second game.

“They (Mifflinburg) are a tough team,” said Smith. “We split with them before so it won’t be easy. Even in the second game when we got beat 7-0, it was scoreless going into the bottom of the fifth so we’ll have to be on top of our game.”

Jersey Shore 7, Selinsgrove 3

(DISTRICT 4 CLASS AAAA SEMIFINALS)

Selinsgrove 002 100 0 — 3 7 3

Jersey Shore 012 112 x — 7 9 1

Samantha Artley and Hailey Bingaman. Kylie Russell and Alyssa Stover. W–Russell. L–Artley.

Top Jersey Shore hitters: Hailey Stetts 2-3, 2B, RBI, 2 runs, RBI; Brianna Herman 2-4; Alyssa Stover 1-3, 2B; Maddie Herman 1-3, HR; Carolyn Wacker 2-3, 2 runs.

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