ALLENTOWN \u2014 From an Allentown softball team\u2019s perspective, there\u2019s really very little you can say about its game against St. John Vianney on Monday.<\/p>\n
With quality wins over Northern Burlington and Steinert on its resume and enjoying its best season in years, Allentown was hoping to make another positive statement against a visiting St. John Vianney team that came into the game with a 12-0 record and the No. 1 ranking in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
Suffice it to say, that didn\u2019t happen as the Shore Conference team put on an impressive hitting display and beat Allentown, 10-4.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, lest one think scoring four runs against an SJV team that had given up only 10 all season is pretty good, it should be pointed out the Redbird runs came in the seventh after the Lancers had taken senior ace Madison McDougall out of the game after six innings.<\/p>\n
When McDougall departed, Allentown got going at the plate for the first time in the game and scored all four of its runs on a grand slam by Riley Daly against a back-up pitcher.<\/p>\n
At this point McDougall was summoned back into the game to get the final out. A hard-throwing senior righty who won state championships in her freshman and sophomore seasons, McDougall gave up only three hits while striking out 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in a different class,\u201d said Allentown coach Rich Dawson. \u201cWe hung in there for a while, but then the wheels came off. It is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a matter of Allentown (14-5) playing poorly, but rather SJV mashing the ball. Even many of its outs were smoked line drives and before it was over the Lancers had gotten home runs by Gabby Gonzalez and Olivia Lombardi.<\/p>\n
After Gonzalez drove in the first run\u00a0 with a first-inning double, Allentown junior righty Kelsey Loughlin did get through the next two innings unscathed. In the fourth, however, SJV got two more when Gonzalez led off the inning with a homer and Olivia Haslacher lofted a sac fly.<\/p>\n
SJV added a fourth run in the fifth on a sac fly by McDougall and then really erupted for five in the sixth. The big blow in that game was a crushed three-run double by the lefty swinging McDougall down the right field line.<\/p>\n
Although it came with a big asterisk because McDougall was not in the circle at the time, Allentown did have something to cheer about at the end when singles by Ava Centanni, Angelina Minerva and Loughlin led to Daly\u2019s grand slam.<\/p>\n
Loughlin also ripped a double to left field in the third inning and was the only Allentown batter with more than one it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are good,\u201d said Dawson. \u201cIt\u2019s like playing a college team, but these are the type of teams you want to play in order to get better.<\/p>\n
St. John Vianney (13-0) 100 215 1 \u2013 10 10 1<\/p>\n
Allentown (14-5) 000 000 4 \u2013 4 7 2<\/p>\n
WP-McDougall. LP-Loughlin. 2B-Gonzales (SJV), McDougall (SJV), Loughlin. HR-Gonzalez, Lombardi (SJV), Daly (A).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN \u2014 From an Allentown softball team\u2019s perspective, there\u2019s really very little you can say about its game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,305,915,726,10356],"class_list":["post-177770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-high-school-sports","tag-new-jersey","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-trt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}