Lady Rams come out flat at start against Fox Lane and pay the price in 12-0 softball shutout loss
April 24, 2024 at 11:02 p.m.
When you are a veteran coach seasoned by the ebb and flow of Ws and Ls, sporting cliches are part of the game.
A lot of them were running through Lady Rams coach Jeanine Maiolini's mind during her team's latest 12-0 shutout loss away to Fox Lane on Tuesday, Apr. 16.
Samples of those cliches, reeled in inning by inning, follow.
Reeling in cliches
“It's not how you start: it's how you finish," said Maiolini. But then there is the counter thought that says if you start too slowly and get too far behind to catch up, it doesn't really matter how strong you finish unless you are more into looking and feeling good about the effort and subscribe to the winning doesn't matter way of thinking.
Which isn't Maiolini's way of thinking. Because while she knows you can't win them all and wants her girls to have fun, she also wants them to always take their best shot, never quit, keep learning, keep trying and compete to the best of their ability no matter what happens.
That didn't happen against the Foxes. At least not from the start.
Quotes in play
That's where another saying comes into play, the one that goes: "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game."
Unless you are more tuned into the infamous quote that says: "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," most often wrongly attributed to the late Hall of Fame Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi instead of its true originator Henry Russell (Red) Sanders, the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Bruins football coach who is on record saying it as far back as the 1930s.
Maiolini doesn't buy into that winning is the only thing way of thinking, no matter who said it first.
She stresses putting the fun in the fundamentals, practicing and playing hard, and learning lifetime lessons through team play that make you a better person, win or lose.
Disappointing start
That's why she was so disappointed with the way her team played against Fox Lane.
At least at the start. Because it was the beginning of the end.
"The bottom line is that we came out flat with zero energy on the field and on the bench and we were not playing for each other against Fox Lane," Maiolini said. "It took three full innings to turn our energy level around. and we did so, I give them credit for that. I told the girls that as a team we need to pick each other up and take ownership for our mistakes instead of playing the blame game. Once we did that and changed our energy and output, we played a better second half of the game."
But by then it was too little too late against a good team like Fox Lane because the Rams had already dug themselves into a hole they couldn't get out of.
And that was too bad.
Because the Lady Rams had their chances.
"The score said 12-0, but in 21 at bats we had seven hits," Maiolini said. "That means we were able to get girls on base but couldn't move them along to score runs. Fox Lane's pitcher was good, but she threw consistent strikes, so she was very hittable.”
And Port Chester did hit with the hits coming from Morgan Saunders, Tabby Sanchez, Tamara Correia, Kimberly Ventura, Melina Morban, Marisa Rodriguez and Fatima Coyt. Isabella Rivera and Sofia Greco also walked as did Saunders, Sanchez and Ventura. Heidi Gonzalez also had a stolen base.
So Port Chester had lots of runners on base.
They just couldn't score.
But you have to be in it to win it, and it helps if you are in it from the get-go. The Rams weren't against the Foxes.
So Maiolini hopes her Lady Rams get that message because they will need it in their upcoming games against some very good teams in Ossining away Friday (4/26) at 4:30 p.m., Fox Lane at home in a return match Monday (4/29) at 5 p.m., Ossining at home Tuesday (4/30) and White Plains at home Thursday (5/2), both at 4:30 p.m.
Cliches aside, the name of the scholastic sports softball game is windmilling pitchers who can throw heat. Those three rival teams have it while the Lady Rams are still tilting at windmills. And that's a metaphor, not a cliche. But true nonetheless. And until Port Chester develops a year-round travel team program or a facsimile of the Port Chester Youth Baseball League that includes a fast pitch development program that can compete against the area's more established teams, it's going to be a long, rocky, winding road ahead for Lady Rams softball and their ultra-dedicated coach. Maiolini and her Lady Rams deserve better.
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