NORTH RIDGEVILLE — Tess Sito pitched her fourth no-hitter of the year and had two hits. Sarah Bracey hit a grand slam for the first home run of her high school career and made a running, diving catch in right field worthy of the ESPN highlights.
Catcher Jen Bower called a nearly flawless game and had three hits, and freshman Cynthia Woodard had two hits. So it went.
All was right with the world for Elyria’s first-seeded softball team Tuesday. With all of that going for them, the Pioneers defeated Midview, 8-0, to win their 10th district championship in the 10th straight season they’ve won 20 or more games.
It was the identical score by which Elyria defeated the Middies in the championship game of the Elyria Softball Classic on April 26.
The Pioneers (22-1) are ranked No. 1 statewide in Division I and 21st in the country according to a national high school poll. They’ve been state runners-up the last two years.
For the effort, the Pioneers win a trip to the Clyde regional, where next Wednesday they’ll meet North Royalton in a 5 p.m. semifinal. The winner gets a return trip to the championship game at noon on May 31 and a shot at the Division I Final Four.
The junior Sito missed a perfect game when she walked Midview catcher Mindy Putt with two out in the fourth inning. Having retired the first 11 batters, she then retired the next 10. She faced 22 batters in all, one over the minimum.
“Yesterday, I actually felt better,” Sito said. “But today my change-up was working a lot. I used my change and my riseball a lot.” She struck out 11.
Elyria took a 1-0 lead in the second inning when the first of Woodard’s two singles scored Ashlee Stolarski, who led off with a bunt single. The Pioneers scored twice more in the second. Left fielder Megan Bashak drove home Sito, who had also reached with a bunt single. And Bashak scored on Brianna Wade’s sacrifice fly.
It became a 4-0 Pioneers lead in the fourth after freshman Kristen Boros led off with a double down the left-field line, then scored on Bower’s second single of the afternoon.
The Middies’ Brittany Stone retired Elyria in order in the fifth. Then came the sixth and Bracey’s grand slam. Bower and Sito, who singled, and Bashak, who walked, were on base when the junior Bracey went to the plate with one out. Facing a 1-0 count, she blasted the next pitch over the fence in left-center to create the final score.
Was it a called shot?
“When I was walking up to the plate, I heard somebody say, ‘You won’t hit the granny,’ you know, like we’ll say, ‘OK, Tess, you won’t strike her out,’ but she always does,” Bracey said. “I think it was Jessica Mandula. She called it.”
Perhaps even more dramatic than the homer was the catch Bracey made of a sinking liner by Courtney Burgess in the second inning. Racing to her right, Bracey dived for the ball and made an improbable one-handed catch.
“We’ve been working on diving a lot lately because we weren’t making plays,” Bracey said. “Today I had a really bad day in our warm-up with diving. We do it every day before the game and I had a really hard time with it today. But in the game, it was natural.”
Bower, who called the pitches, said it was another day at the office for Sito.
“Pretty much everything was working for her as usual,” said Bower. “She’s a pretty strong pitcher.”
As for her own 3-for-4 afternoon, Bower said: “We played them earlier in the year, but (Stone) has improved a lot. I just tried to stay on it.”
With another two-hit game, the freshman Woodard realizes she is improving.
“I felt fantastic,” she said. “I was watching the ball and I saw where it was coming and just made contact. This means a lot, because it shows that my game is good. I’m improving as the year goes on.”
Midview leaves the tournament with a 20-8 record. It is the second time in Mike Ives’ three years as head coach that the Middies have won 20 or more games. The Middies suffered another loss when Putt, their sophomore catcher, was injured by a foul tip off the bat of Boros on the first pitch of the fourth inning.
Putt was forced to leave the game and there were fears that she might have suffered a broken jaw. Ives said she will be taken for X-rays today.
“I can’t say enough about Ives and his team as far as sportsmanship goes,” said Elyria coach Ken Fenik. “A lot of the kids on both teams play summer ball together. It just shows you how strong softball is. (Ives) is at the beginning with those rookies (six freshmen) of his. But in the next few years, he’s going to be loaded.”

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.

Need help? Email Us.