AKRON — If you drive over to visit the Sitos, park on the street.
The driveway at the Sito house is a batting cage. It has been for years. That minor inconvenience paid major dividends Friday.
“I practiced hitting with my dad this morning,” Tess Sito said after Elyria’s 11-2 rout of Mason in the Division I state tournament semifinal Friday at Firestone Stadium. “I got the pitches I wanted and I exploded on the ball.”
That she did. Sito collected four hits — three singles and a double — and scored three times. She could have had four runs had she not been lifted for a pinch runner after a leadoff double in the sixth inning.
It wasn’t just Sito who put the hitting shoes on Friday. The entire Pioneers team, offensively challenged in two state tournament games in 2007 and the championship game in 2006, unloaded for 11 runs (eight earned) against the stunned Comets.
Elyria (28-1) had gone 12 consecutive innings without scoring a run in Division I Final Four games before Friday. The Pioneers still have a string of 14 innings without a run in state championship games.
“It was something I read in the newspapers,” Elyria coach Ken Fenik said. “I told them, ‘Hey, that’s a challenge,’ and they came through.”
The Pioneers ended the streak with two runs in the first inning. They stayed sharp with runs in five of the six innings in which they batted. 
“Some people say we don’t hit the ball well in the state tournament, and they’re right,” Fenik said. “Today was different. Boom, they hit the ball.”
Fenik and his players had no explanation for their aggressiveness at the plate.
“We’re regularly aggressive,” said Jessica Bellottie, who had two hits and drove in two runs.
The aggressiveness was noticeable on the bases, too. Elyria runners regularly took extra bases when Mason fielders blinked. Fenik claimed there wasn’t a scouting report that said runners could act with boldness against Mason.
“What we got was what we found on the Internet,” Fenik said. “We looked at any story about Mason we could find. We didn’t know much about their pitcher (Christin Miller). We wanted to see who their power hitters were, and who their jackrabbits on the bases were. That’s about all we had on this team.”
Elyria scored runs in the first and second innings and hung on for a 2-1 victory against Mason in last year’s state semifinal game.
“We played them last year and they were aggressive then,” Mason coach Brian Castner said.
Castner agreed that Elyria pounced on his team’s fielding miscues.
“There were about three or four mental errors, where we did not know where their girls were on the bases,” he said. “They were on and we weren’t. Elyria is a good team and you cannot make a mistake against them and think it will be all right.
“We did not help ourselves. We got in the can early and were unsure of ourselves. We started pressing when Elyria got the lead.”
Sito, the Pioneers’ pitcher, expressed hope that Friday’s heavy hitting will carry over into today’s finale against North Canton Hoover and All-Ohio pitcher Jessica Simpson.
“It gives us confidence, even though Jessica is a good pitcher,” Sito said. “If we had scored just one or two runs it would have been different.”
Contact Steve Byrne at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.
 
 
 

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