Seniors Mary Clement, Alicia Zeringue and Amanda Savoie use experience, savvy to lead Lady Comets this year

By JOHNNY PEPPO

Sports Editor

Fans of St. Charles softball already know this from seeing the Lady Comets in close games this season, but that squad is packed with talented and clutch players.

Starting with seniors Mary Clement, Amanda Savoie and Alicia Zeringue, who helped lead the team to a state runner-up title in Class 3A last season, and rounding out with some younger players that have shown a great deal of potential such as sophomores Lauren Coniglio and Katie Tregre, SCC rarely failed to come through come crunch time.

Despite beginning the season with a losing record for the first half of the schedule, the Lady Comets brought it when it mattered toward the end of the season. The turning point seemed to be the second match-up with John Curtis where the Lady Patriots barely escaped with a 1-0 in LaPlace. After coming so close to topping the premiere team in 2A, if not in the state, St. Charles turned it up a notch and made a run to secure the district runner-up title in the most competitive district in that class.

Once the post-season arrived, the Lady Comets playoff lives were at stake by the final inning in three of their four match-ups en route to the title game. Against St. Thomas Aquinas in the second round, it came down to the final out where Zeringue gunned it from the outfield to Lauren Coniglio in time to make the final out of the game on the tying run at home plate.

For the quarterfinals round against Fisher, SCC had to rally from a 2-0 deficit. RBIs from Clement and Katie Tregre, and a solo home run by Savoie finally put St. Charles on top in the final inning of play. And in their match-up with DeQuincy for the semi-finals, it took a homer in the seventh by Zeringue to tie and a streak of base-runners that culminated in Gina Monica making it home for the winning run after Katie Reine hit to third and the resulting throw got passed the first baseman. That sequence of events put SCC in the championship game against Curtis.

For the season, Coniglio led the Lady Comets on offense with a batting average better than .400 with five home runs and 32 runs batted in. She obviously didn’t miss from the batter’s box very often as is evident with only 11 strikeouts on the season. Savoie ran a respectable second, hitting almost .360 from the plate and recording 22 RBIs with a pair of homers. Speaking of clutch players, Clement and Zeringue caught on late, stepping up their batting averages by a substantial amount for district games and the playoffs.