Henning pitches shutout to lead Robinson
By Jason Devaney
With a slim two-run lead entering the bottom of the seventh inning Friday night, Robinson softball pitcher Erin Henning had to do just one thing: maintain. Keep painting the corners and get outs.
The senior right-hander did just that, striking out the side as the Rams knocked off host Westfield, 2-0. Robinson, which has struggled at times this season, improved to 5-7 overall and 2-3 in the Concorde District. Westfield dropped to 9-5, 5-2.
Henning was a mound machine for seven solid innings. She faced the minimum number of batters in the first, third, fourth and seventh frames, and finished the night with zero walks and five strikeouts. Westfield was able to muster four hits, two in the fifth. Henning's offspeed pitching style – she rarely, if ever, throws a fastball – resulted in six ground outs.
She was the poster child for efficiency.
“She was just on,” Robinson coach Barry Gorodnick said. “All her stuff was working, her curveball was working pretty well tonight. She was able to keep them off balance and I think she just relaxed. She didn't feel like she had to do it all. In the past when we haven't been winning, she's putting all the pressure on herself that she's gotta strike everybody out.”
Offensively, Robinson was unable to do much in the early innings. Westfield starting pitcher Alex Tenney allowed just two hits in her four innings of work before being lifted for Jackie Martinez. One inning later, the Rams broke the scoreless tie with some timely hitting and good old fashioned small-ball.
Junior second baseman Christine Cunningham led off the sixth with a sliced triple down the right field line, and she scored during the next at-bat on a wild pitch that bounced to the backstop. That batter, sophomore Marcy Bowdren, drew a walk. Henning then laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt short of the pitching circle, and senior Taryn Cutrona followed by reaching base on another walk. Sophomore Kathryn Lohr next flew out to deep left-center, but Bowdren tagged up and gave Robinson a 2-0 lead that proved to be enough.
“That's huge,” Gorodnick said of Cunningham's table-setting, opposite-field shot. “They're giving it to us. I told her, 'Outside pitch, take it.' She just stepped and she just drove it and that got everything going. That was huge.”
Prior to Robinson's sixth-inning output, Westfield threatened to get on the scoreboard in the home half of the fifth. With one out, sophomore Casey McMahon laced a double to the left-center field fence. Then with two outs, she advanced to third on a Martinez single up the middle. However, Henning got herself out of the jam by inducing an inning-ending groundout.
“I felt really good out there, I've been working hard,” Henning noted. “We've been trying our hardest in our practices, just trying to do well. I'm really working on my pitching this year.”
Westfield entered this season young and inexperienced after losing some key seniors, but coach Dean Ferrington has molded the Bulldogs into a district threat that cannot be taken lightly. Westfield beat Herndon on April 11, the team's biggest win of the season.
“You have kids like Jackie and Frankie Martinez come in, you get Jessie McNamara coming in, Anna [Munizza] is a year older, finally playing the way I thought she should play,” Ferrington said of this year's squad. “We can go one through nine and put the ball in play. We didn't tonight. And plus we have some competition ... it's a real good mix of kids. It's fun.”
Robinson next hosts district power Centreville on Tuesday night, while Westfield travels to Oakton the same day.