Elyria Catholic gets lopsided tournament win in softball

ELYRIA — Nadia Pagan is usually the tablesetter and basestealer for Elyria Catholic but Tuesday she took a different route.Pagan whacked a grand slam as the top-seeded Panthers walked off with a 21-0 Division IV tournament win over No. 24 seed Niles McKinley.Pagan, a junior with 28 stolen bases and 28 runs, drove in six off two hits — the slam in the third inning and a two-run single in the fourth — to close out the scoring. EC (23-4), with seven straight wins, moves on to Thursday's district final against No. 7 Marlington (18-6), a 10-0 winner over Cloverleaf on Tuesday."It's not my first home run but it's my first grand slam," said Pagan, who played second base and center field Tuesday. "Very exciting moment. I wanted to do good for my team even though we were up by a lot. I want to do what I can for my team.""She stayed back this time and was looking for her pitch," said EC coach Jim Piazza. "That's something we keep preaching. Just because it's a strike, doesn't mean it's your pitch. We've got to stay in the box and look for our pitch until we have two strikes. We get two strikes, now we've just got to put it in play."EC came out scoring right off the bat.The Panthers opened their half of the first with the first six batters reaching and scoring, including Pagan, who walked and stole second. The Panthers scored seven runs in the first, nine more in the second, three in the third and two in the fourth, taking advantage of seven errors and 11 walks.Elyria Catholic pounded out 15 hits, four each by junior Jessica Conner and senior Paytin Baehr, three from freshman Alyssa Winter and a two-run homer by junior Kailey Tomasch, her 15th. Freshman catcher Molly Stang drove in one with her single in the second.EC's two homers gave it 43 on the year.On the mound, freshman Megan Stang and Tomasch combined to shut out Niles, which had hits in each of the first four innings. Stang struck out six, Tomasch three. The defense made all the plays. Senior third baseman Lillian Ciryak made a great catch of a low liner in the top of the second and Conner made a similar play at first in the fourth to turn a double play."We don't worry about our opponent," said Piazza. "We've got to worry about what we do. If we come out and give the effort we're supposed to, good things will always happen. Now, we've just got to go to the next one and keep going one at a time."Contact Tim Gebhardt at 329-7135 or at timothygeb@msn.com.