St. Aloysius shortstop Sarah Kerut throws to first base after forcing out Candace Joyner (9) at second base in the fourth inning. Looking on is Ashley Magee (16). (C. Todd ShermanThe Vicksburg Post)

[4/15/03]St. Aloysius blew Sumrall away with a giant sigh of relief on Monday.

Laura Beth Lyons stole third and scored on a throwing error in the bottom of the seventh inning to give St. Al a 4-3 win in game two of a first-round MHSAA Class 1A-2A playoff series at Bazinsky Park.

Then, in the decisive game three, the Lady Flashes scored 10 runs in the first inning and went on to a 14-2 rout.

With the doubleheader sweep, St. Al won the best-of-three series 2-1 and advanced to face Bogue Chitto in the second round. Game one of the second-round series will be Thursday at Bazinsky Park. A starting time has not been determined yet.

“I figured if we could win the first game, the second game wouldn’t be as hard. (Sumrall) only had one pitcher,” St. Al coach Gene Rogillio said, adding that he knew little about Bogue Chitto. “We never played Bogue Chitto. Bogue Chitto is kind of new to (fast-pitch).”

St. Al (15-3) needed to sweep Monday’s doubleheader to advance after Sumrall (10-5) took an 8-2 win in the first game of the series at home on Saturday.

Game two was a slugfest early, with Sumrall taking a 2-0 lead in the top of the first with a pair of unearned runs and St. Al answering in the bottom of the inning with a bases-loaded double by Stephanie Evans. Evans’ hit cleared the bases and gave the Lady Flashes a 3-2 lead.

Sumrall tied the game in the fourth when Jenna Hutchison reached on a fielder’s choice and scored on an error, but by then the game had settled into a pitchers’ duel between the Lady Bobcats’ Brittany Stevens and Lyons.

Stevens didn’t allow a hit after the first inning, retired eight straight at one point, and struck out four. Lyons, meanwhile, struck out 11, allowed no earned runs, and walked one batter.

Stevens’ undoing was her wildness. She walked six batters, five of them after the third inning.

“We had the take on all night long. We decided to make her work, rather than cutting down at the first pitch. We started hitting the ball, and then she started walking, which helped even more,” Rogillio said.

Stevens escaped one jam in the fourth, when she walked two batters with one out, but couldn’t dodge the last mistake in the seventh.

Lyons drew a one-out walk and promptly stole second. After Stevens threw a pitch to Sarah Kerut, Lyons broke for third on a delayed steal. Stevens threw to third, but the ball went into left field and Lyons easily scored the winning run.

“It was just something that I knew I could take advantage of, and we needed one more run so I had to make it happen,” Lyons said.

Game three had none of the drama of its predecessor.

St. Al sent 15 batters to the plate in the first inning, and scored 10 runs despite getting just three hits. Three Sumrall pitchers, including an exhausted Stevens, combined for seven walks and a hit batter in the inning.

St. Al also took advantage of nearly a dozen wild pitches to bring in most of its runs. The only run-scoring hit was a single by Mary Myers Franco the 14th batter of the inning.

“It was painful. It was very painful,” Sumrall coach Leigh Ann Fitzgerald said of the inning. “And it was hard on the girls, because they wanted it just as bad as anybody else. We were just trying to hold our heads up and get it across that we had to keep moving pitchers and do what they had to do.”

St. Al added three runs in the second inning, two of them on a triple by Lyons, and one in the fourth to increase the lead to 14-0.

Sumrall finally got on the board in the fifth when Leslie Shumock drove in a run with a double and scored when St. Al traded a run for an out on a double steal. But the Lady Bobcats never got close to getting back in the game or even getting within 10 runs to avoid losing by the mercy rule.

St. Al only had five hits in the game, but drew 12 walks in all.

“We’ve struggled with our pitching all year. We’ve really depended on Brittany, and so it really hurt us when we had to go two in a row like that,” Fitzgerald said. “They were tired. But we had a lot of serious errors that cost us the game in the first inning.”