Cats, Kotsiopoulos
shine in softball opener
for West Bridgewater
By Justin A. Rice
“Don’t wave your coach off,” Gerrior said a moment before Kotsiopoulos collected the 13th strikeout of her 6-0, four-hit victory. “All right, I guess you can.”
The senior pitcher, who played first base during the Wildcats’ run to the Div. 3 state championship game last year, earned the right to throw her pitch.
After all, she finished with 17 strikeouts for West Bridgewater.
“That’s pretty amazing,” Gerrior said of her pitcher’s performance.
By the time Blue Hills catcher Amanda Ortiz got to the plate in the sixth inning, Kotsiopoulos was well within her zone.
“She wanted me to throw a changeup and I felt their hitters were most likely to hit a changeup,” Kotsiopoulos said of her coaches call during Ortiz’s at-bat. “The whole game I didn’t throw changeups. I wanted to stay with my fastball and throw different spots with it instead of going with a changeup.
“But she has a good feel for what to throw and what I like to throw. She knows the calls. She knows I’ll call it off if I don’t like it. We have good communication with that.”
After only providing one run of support through the first five innings, the Wildcats finally opened things up in the sixth.
The first RBI in that inning came on designated hitter Kelcey Harper’s triple that knocked in Amanda Shea, who was pinch running for Lauren Baker.
Kotsiopoulos helped her own cause with a triple of her own that knocked off the center field wall, sending Katelyn Taylor and Joyce Ashley home for the final runs of the game.
“It was 1-0 going into the sixth inning, said Blue Hills coach Chris Flynn, whose team split two games with WB last year. “We couldn’t ask for anything more than that. We were right where we wanted to be. We were one of the teams that knocked them off last year. We knew we could run with them.”
But the Warriors only ran with WB as long as their opponent wasnt hitting.
“We struggled hitting — I expected that coming into the game,” Flynn said. “We’re a new team, we have a lot of first-year players playing at the varsity level for the first time. It will come around. But they hit well in the last inning.”
Blue Hills pitcher Anayssa Manning struck out four batters and recorded four scoreless innings.
WB’s first run came off the bat of senior second baseman Danielle Correia, whose single knocked in Kotsiopoulos in the opening inning.
“It was definitely first-game jitters,” Correia said of the ensuing dry spell. “Plus, we had a new coach. We got all that out. You could tell by the end of the game we really started to pick it up. All the nerves were gone.
“It’s always good to get a win in the first game, especially at home.
That sentiment was more than shared by Gerrior, a 1996 graduate of ApponequetRegional High School who guided Bishop Feehan to the tournament three times times in five years before taking over the WB program this year from retired co-coaches Ed Fitzgerald and Dick Zanca.
Now that she has one win under her belt, Gerrior hopes to get a few pitch calls in there as well.
“(Catcher) Laura (Baker) calls all the pitches,” Gerrior said. “I like to throw (a call) in there sometimes.”
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