THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605260223
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATTI WALSH, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 30 lines
For Nansemond-Suffolk Academy, Saturday evening's Virginia Independent Schools state softball championship game might as well have been Mission Impossible.
The reason: Natalie Price, Bishop O'Connell's 60-plus mph hurler.
Price, who will attend the University of Georgia on a full scholarship, fanned 14 batters and allowed only two hits in leading the Knights to 7-0 victory over the Saints.
Bishop O'Connell completed a 23-0 season. N-SA finished 22-3.
The Knights pounded away in the first inning, scoring five runs on five hits. Leadoff batter Claudia Hickey took Sarah Putnam's first pitch of the game deep to left for a triple. Hickey scored when catcher Lea Putnam's pickoff throw got by Alison Dunn covering third.
Putnam struck out Emily Wilkenson on a changeup for the first out, but the Knights batted through the order, scoring four more times.
N-SA, meanwhile, was set down in order until the fourth inning, when Katie Young beat out a bunt. Until then, only Putam, who grounded out to second, and Meg McIntosh, who grounded out to third, had put the bat on the ball.
The Saints seemed to catch up with Price in the top half of the sixth when Jennifer Johnson drilled a hit to deep leftfield. Johnson, trying to stretch a triple into what would have been N-SA's only run, was tagged out in a rundown. Price retired the next two batters, then struck out the side in the seventh to end the game. by CNB