Team (Record) / Inning	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	R	H	E
LOWELL (10-18)	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	3	2
MORTON (21-1)	0	4	0	0	0	1	-	5	10	2

HIGHLAND (05-22-2010) There was a thought that Lowell would rise up and win a game or two in last week’s Class 4A Sectional 1 softball tournament. That hope didn’t exist very long. Two Lowell errors led to a four-run second inning for Morton, and the Governors (21-2) ended Lowell’s season 5-1 out behind Highland High School.

It would be nice to say that the Devils should have won, but that wasn’t really true. Lowell (10-18) played a capable game after the second inning, but fell behind a team that was used to winning this year, and it showed down to the last out.

With two on and two out in the seventh, Lowell’s Lexi Marshall got a pitch she could handle from Morton winning pitcher Anjellica Justiniano (17-1) and hit a solid line drive. But she hit it right at Morton senior shortstop Jessica Chorak, who grabbed it to end the game and Lowell’s season. A season in which they were 7-4 at one point before losing 14 of their last 17 games.

Lowell got just three base hits in the 6 p.m. sectional opening game and, while the scoreboard showed the Red Devils were never out of the game, it never felt like they were in it either.
Justiniano looks like you can hit her. But she moves the ball around in and out of the strike zone and takes a frustrating amount of time between pitches. It bothers the batters, even though she doesn’t mean it that way.

"No, it’s just me,” Justiniano said. “I want to be relaxed up there. I don’t want to rush anything. I don’t want to over-think anything. I just throw. I was throwing a little bit of everything. It’s a drop curve. I like to mix speeds a lot.”

Morton didn’t win the sectional title and didn’t figure to. But led by Justiniano, a curve-balling right-hander, the Governors, who graduate just two seniors this month, should have a winning team in 2013 as well.

“This is big.” she said. “We were babies when he (coach Barno) was a baby. We came in (to high school) when he came in.”

Lowell gave up four unearned runs in the second-inning on an error by second baseman Cassie Kroll, a bad decision on a fielder’s choice throw to second by Lowell starting pitcher Brandi Faverty, and a two-run triple from Morton’s Yarieliz Reyes.

Lowell scored in the seventh on a single by senior Ashley Starcevich, but was not close to winning the game after the four-run second.

“That’s the story of our life this season,” said Lowell coach Pete Iussig, completing his comeback year as Lowell varsity coach. “That’s the one thing that coach (Jim Chancellor) and I thought we could change. We did a bad job."

“Brandi’s had better games. She usually gets six, seven strikeouts. But if you think (Morton) hit the ball today, you should have seen them last Monday (a 9-4 Morton win over Lowell on May 14) when they got eight runs in the first inning.”

“That’s not a bad team. That pitcher’s off-speed kept us off-balance the whole night. She was much better tonight than the first time we played them.”

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Class 4A Sectional 1
Quarterfinals at Highland May 21-25
Lake Central 13, East Chicago 0 (5 innings)
Munster 12, Gary West Side 0 (5 innings)
Morton 5, LOWELL 1
Semifinals
Lake Central 13, Highland 0 (5 innings)
Munster 11, Morton 0 (5 innings)
Championship
Lake Central 5, Munster 0

Class 4A Sectional 2
Quarterfinals at Chesterton - May 21-25
Crown Point 8, LaPorte 3
Portage 10, Michigan City 0
Hobart 3, Merillville 2 (8 innings)
Chesterton 8, Valparaiso 1
Semifinals
Crown Point 4, Portage 3
Chesterton 13, Hobart 3 (5 innings)
Championship
Chesterton 7, Crown Point 6

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