By Michael Letendre
WATERFORD – After dropping a tough 3-0 decision to Southington on Monday, the softball team from Bristol Central hasn’t skipped a beat.
Turning lemons into lemonade, Central zipped off four straight victories, ending with a big 4-1 victory over Waterford in a non-conference bout from Waterford High School on Saturday.
Central is now 16-1 with a showdown against RHAM on tap this coming Monday (3:45 p.m.).
Opportunity came and went for Central’s Sierra Messier who played extremely well.
She blasted out two hits over the winning effort while Adrianna Lubrico nabbed three hits and generated an RBI over the triumph in Waterford.
Feisty Kaley Laird dropped in two doubles and in the circle, Sophia Torreso was at it again, posting another ‘W’ for the program.
The chucker earned another victory, scooping up 12 strikeouts, to seize the win over the Lancers (no, not our Lancers from Bristol but those other Lancers who go to school along Route 1).
Off the loss, Waterford fell to 12-6.
Pia is 400 Ks in…and counting
This past week, Pia Torreso breached 400 strikeouts for her career and continues to add to that amazing ledger.
Between no hitters and perfect games, 17 strikeout appearances are par for the course when Torreso battles from the circle.
She’s had an incredible career and put her squad in position to snare a top-three seed in the Class L field.
Southington won’t be hanging around the bracket this season as that squad is back to Class LL field.
Speaking of state tournament seeding
Off the power of the four-game winning streak, only North Haven and Monroe has better records than Bristol Central in the Class L rankings.
North Haven is a prefect 17-0 while the Rams (16-1) are just a half-game behind in third place.
Masuk of Monroe is in second place at 17-1 but the Rams have more power points (156-153) which will keep the locals ahead of the program if tiebreakers are needed.
The squad from Bristol actually leads Class L in power points and only Fairfield Ludlowe (17-1, 160 power points in Class LL) has more than the Rams due over the entire CIAC softball field.
Leading the cheers
Anyone who goes to see the Central softball program in action knows who leads the cheers when the locals are up at the plate.
No, it’s not scorekeeper Tad (he’s too busy trying to record all of Pia’s strikeouts) or head coach Monica Hayes (the last time Hayes and Bristol Central girls basketball coach Steve Gaudet tried singing in public, every window at BCHS ended up breaking).
No, it’s senior Kaley Laird, leading the charge and orchestrating the songs and cheers.
However, if she ever broke out with lines from the popular song ‘John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt’ from the bench, she would be an instant hero.
You’ve heard that excellent song before.
It has something to do about how John’s name is my name too, people going out and people shouting…just up Laird’s alley.
Waterford’s turf field
To anyone who went down to the game in Waterford on Saturday, did you see the amazing facility the squad gets to play on?
It’s another program that enjoys an all-weather turf – amazing to contest a softball game on.
Now, can I ask why Bristol doesn’t have such a facility for our softball teams in town, yet?
Do I have to go on more rants this year about the subpar fields our girls are being forced to play on in Bristol?
Frankly, you can dress Casey Field up all you want but it’s not cutting it and we’re too big of a community not to have an all-weather turf field for softball.
So, quite frankly, when is someone going to figure this out?
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