When the Bristol Eastern Lancers came into the season, one of their main goals was to beat Bristol Central and in the first two innings Monday evening it looked like the Lancers may have been capable of giving the Rams their first loss of the year.
The Lancers came out with an intense amount of energy. They were ready for the matchup and took an early 1-0 lead in the first inning. However, despite the early score the Rams embodied many of the characteristics of their teammate Kaley Laird; driven, confident and energetic.
When the Rams needed some motivation or a little energy to take the momentum back from the Lancers, everyone in the crowd could hear Laird’s passion in her chants, especially a loud “NO” when the Lancers pitchers threw a ball.
Bristol Central would eventually settle in and defeat the Lancers 10-2 to improve to 11-0. Bristol Eastern now falls to 5-5
“My team matches my energy. We get each other going on the bench and I think we just brought a lot of energy today,” Laird said. “We’re always going to compete with whatever they throw at us. They scored first, but with that being said we battled back and worked harder.”
During the third inning, the Rams managed to tie up the game 1-1 when Leah Sklenka hit a single to midfield to bring home Laird. Then, in the fourth inning the Rams put three more runs on the board to take the lead.
Bristol Central would give up one home-run in the bottom of the fourth inning to Bristol Eastern, but after that score the pitching duo of Alexandra Sciarretto and Sophia Torreso would keep the Lancers at bay for the rest of the game.
Torreso said a great thing about this team is that with having two pitchers they know the person behind them is going to always back them up and the defense is going to back them up.
“We struggled through some errors in the beginning, but Kaley Laird and Sam Sklenka, our teammates, picked us up with energy in the dugout and we got some hits,” Torreso said. “We were really aggressive on the bases. We picked each other up and I think that's what we need to do every single game.”
She added with the amount of seniors and juniors on the team and the experience that they have from going to the state championship last year they have a good level of confidence despite the situation.
Bristol Central coach Monica Hayes said she’s not surprised about how the game started, but she challenged her team to match Bristol Eastern’s energy.
“They had more energy than we did to start the game. We had to match their energy and I gave that challenge to them in the second or third inning,” Hayes said. “It’s a city series so I’m not surprised at all that they got up on us to start. It’s always evenly matched. It's a tough game when we play each other.”
Despite the loss for Bristol Eastern, the Lancers had several positives to take away from the game including the pitching from Ashley Serafin. Bristol Eastern coach Tyler Catlin said Serafin pitched well and left it all on the mound.
He also gave credit to how the team stuck around against one of the top tier teams in the state.
“We came out punching first,” Catlin said. “We were hanging around with one of the best teams in the state for four innings…we didn’t buckle.”
