St. Amant flurry leads to comeback win

St. Amant didn't look like St. Amant during the first three innings of their opening night Coach "I" Memorial Tournament matchup against Archbishop Hannan.

The Lady Gators were down 7-0 and had just one hit.

Then, in the blink of an eye, they flipped the switch and started to look like St. Amant again.

Alyssa Romano came in to pitch in the third, and though she got off to a rocky start, she yielded no runs throughout the final four innings.

From the plate, the Lady Gators scored nine in the third and fourth innings to take their first lead, a lead they never relinquished.

This wasn't the first time St. Amant fell down by a large margin and had to make a desperate rally. In the opener, they fell into a 13-0 hole against Hahnville, before scoring 15 unanswered in a crazy 21-16 loss.

"I just wanted to get something going and get the momentum on our side," first-year St. Amant head coach Amy Pitre said. "I think our pitching settled in. We had a rough first few innings to start. We made the pitching change.

"We need to do a better job of getting focused coming into a game. We came in, and I don't think we were prepared to start the game. So, we need to do a better job of that, but our offense is capable of exploding at any time, but we can't play catch-up. We can't do that anymore."

The Lady Gators fell behind in the first inning after a rough start by starting pitcher Renee Firmin.

She gave up two walks and a two-RBI double, and in the second, the Hawks added a solo homer to go up, 3-0.

After walking the leadoff hitter in the third, Pitre went with Romano. The freshman had a disastrous first inning.

She gave up a single and then back-to-back home runs to give Hannan a 7-0 lead.

But just when things looked their bleakest, the St. Amant offense finally found a spark from their LSU commit, Taylor Tidwell.

After a leadoff walk by Madison Hurt, Tidwell came through with a two-outs double to keep the inning alive.

Both players were then brought home on a two-RBI single by Abbey McKey. To end the inning, Pamela Carbo jacked a solo homer to cut the deficit to 7-4.

St. Amant began the fourth with a leadoff homer by Brooke Romano.

The bases were then loaded after Jadyn Rumfellow was hit by a pitch and both Hurt and Tidwell singled.

Rumfellow scored on an RBI single by McKey, Tidwell scored on a sac fly by Carbo and the final two runs scored on a two-RBI double by McKenzie King.

The five-run flurry gave the Lady Gators their first lead of the game at 9-7, but they weren't done there.

To ice things away in the sixth, Rumfellow led off with a single, and McKey joined her on base with a double.

King then sent both runners home on a two-outs two-RBI double.

Many St. Amant players put up gaudy numbers in the 11-7 victory.

King was 2-4 with four RBIs, Carbo was 1-4 with a home run and four RBIs and McKey was 3-4 with two runs batted in. Tidwell went 2-3 with a walk.

Though Alyssa Romano gave up four runs in the third, in the final four innings, she surrendered just two hits, no runs and she struck out five batters.

"She needs to do a better job of coming in ready to go, but she is a freshman. She's getting better every time she gets into the circle. So, once she got settled in, she was rolling," Pitre said.

The Lady Gators have been up and down to start the season. Friday night was actually the first time they won back-to-back games.

"I've been trying to get that one win to get us going," Pitre said. "Last night, we went to Catholic High of New Iberia and won, 10-3. I think that win helped our offense. We had four home runs in that game, and it helped give us momentum. As you saw, once our offense gets going, we get going. It just takes one person, and we have a lot of people capable of doing big things."

The come-from-behind victory seemed to give St. Amant the momentum Pitre talked about; they followed it up with two more wins.

The four-game winning streak improved their record to 6-3, after just a 2-3 start.