Opening Week: Milestones and Recognitions

The opening week of spring season was filled with milestones and recognitions, yet not all were from the spring season.

Manchester’s Ashley Perez, who led the Indians to a 22-3 season, was among those honored at the 2011 Connecticut High School Coaches Association’s girls’ basketball all-state team banquet. Perez was one of 10 players selected in Class LL.

E.O. Smith’s Maggie Sundberg, who led the Panthers to the state finals, was selected to the Class L team, which also featured faces now familiar to Panthers fans. CHSCA Player-of-the-Year, Brianna Holmes, of Hillhouse-New Haven joined Sundberg on the team, along with Andreana Thomas, also of Hillhouse. Holmes and Thomas led Hillhouse to a 77-50 victory over E.O. Smith in the Class L title game.

Tolland junior Kristin Schatzlein, who led the Eagles to the state semifinals, was one of 10 players selected in Class M, as were Ellington’s Kelly Conley and Suffield’s Brianna Bishop.

Now on to spring…

Lacrosse:

Ellington reached the state tournament in girls’ lacrosse a year ago and the team has a good chance to get back there behind the leadership of Julie Gage, Kelly Stauffer and Lauren Arbeiter.

But the Knights were no match in their season opener against Suffield. The Wildcats made the Division I tournament a year ago, and have nine, four-year players, including four who have already committed to playing in college: Brenna Lowe, Molly Clark, Kristi Chamberlain and Grace Presnick.

Presnick, who scored five goals in Suffield’s 23-10 victory over Ellington Thursday, passed 100 goals for her career. Clark had six goals to lead the Suffield scoring.

Softball:

The race between Ellington and Somers and Suffield, among others, for the NCCC softball title promises to be as riveting as it was a season ago.

The three teams showed why on Opening Day.

Somers’ JoJo Meunier struck out 13 and allowed two hits in a 6-0 victory over Avon. Ellington’s Morgan McPartland allowed one hit in a 16-0 victory over Bolton. And Suffield beat East Granby 16-1.

Sometimes early-season final scores are a strong indication of quality. East Catholic (17-5 last season) lost to Southington 2-1. Based on the score and the opponent you can expect another solid season behind pitcher Allyson Fournier. Another score that might indicate quality is the 7-3 victory for Rockville in its opener against Plainville, a tournament team a season ago. If Rockville can get solid pitching from either Elisa Graf or Courtney Oliver it should have enough firepower to match last season’s 17-4 mark. As for Windsor, which plans to use a pitching tandem of Molly Parker and Sierra Shemanskis, one only needs to check out the linescore of their 6-3 opening loss to Simsbury and see the six in the error column to understand. Young team. First game.

Out in Enfield, Katie Levasseur had three hits and knocked in five runs, and Taylor Maier collected four RBI in a 16-14 victory over East Windsor, which shows that both teams can sock, but will need to engage in better “run prevention” as Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein might say, moving forward.

The one score that is completely inscrutable? Farmington 27, Manchester 26.

Tennis:

Local tennis fans may make a trip out to Somers to watch Somers/Ellington sophomore Hannah Riley on Monday, but while there they might want to take a look at the other team.

Windsor Locks did not win a match last season, but will not go without a win this year. Canton defeated Windsor Locks 4-3 in the first match of the season. Windsor Locks got wins from Cristina Szepanski, Kimberly Love and the doubles team of Ali Martinez and Tianna Duquette and lost another match in three sets.