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Amesbury remains perfect

Wednesday, April, 24 By Jeff Hamrick

AMESBURY – Chances are the Amesbury offense will be more than capable of hurting opposing pitchers all on its own.

But give the Indians a little assistance and chances are even better that they’ll make even shorter work of the beat down.

Visiting Ipswich found out the hard way Wednesday afternoon as Amesbury needed only four innings to do its damage in a 14-1 victory. The Tigers had four errors that led to four unearned runs in the third before the Indian bats wrapped up things with a six-run fourth.

“We’ve been a little bit up and down,” Amesbury coach Jacquie Waters said of her lineup. “In preseason, we did not hit the ball well, so we’ve been working on that. We give it about an hour and a half a day … we’re just trying to spend more time on hitting.”

The Indians spent some time at the plate in the second inning, taking command with four runs on three hits. After watching Ipswich score in the top of the second, Olivia Levasseur led off with a solid single to center before Ella Bezanson reached via fielder’s choice and both scored on Meghan McElaney’s double to left. Abby Aponas drilled an RBI single before scoring the final run on an Emma DiPietro sacrifice fly.

Emily O’Donnell’s lead-off single was Amesbury’s only hit in the third, but Ipswich errors led to runs by O’Donnell, Bezanson, Campbell and McElaney. The only RBI of the frame came on an Aponas fielder’s choice as the Indians opened an 8-1 lead.

Amesbury (4-0) capped the onslaught by sending 12 batters to the plate in the fourth. They combined for seven hits, two of which were RBI singles by pinch hitters Emma Catania and Karleigh Walker.

“I have a good combo of veterans and rookies, which is nice,” Waters said. “I think the veterans kind of bring the rookies along. All of the freshmen are good, but for me, it’s nice to have the veteran be able to stand up and say ‘this is how we do things.’ “

One of those veterans is Emma DiPietro, who sets the offensive tone as the lead-off hitter and runs the infield from her shortstop position. With a run Wednesday, the senior now has scored four runs in the two games since moving into the top spot.

“She’s a fantastic player,” Waters said. “I’ve been fortunate to have her for four years. I can’t say enough about her. She’s just a great kid.”

Defense was needed for only seven of Ipswich’s 15 outs as Delong struck out eight while walking none and allowing an earned run on five hits. The freshman had just one three-ball count and only six other batters saw as many as two balls.

“I hit my spots really well,” Delong said. “And we had some nice plays in the field. We started off a little rough, but we kept our heads up and went through with it. Our hitting was real good today. Everyone hit the ball.”

Ipswich used three singles up the middle to score in the second. In the fourth, the first two Tigers reached via singles but were left hanging at second and third when Delong struck out the next three.

“I used a lot of changeups,” Delong said. “They were up on it, but it tricked them out a little bit. I hit my spots well and Julia (Campbell) did a good job at the plate stopping everything.”