Out of rankings, Battlefield's softball team focuses on winning

Brittany Black casually flipped a piece of wind-blown hair from her forehead and walked purpose-fully back into the pitcher's circle, the tips of her cleats digging up small pieces of infield dirt with each step.

Battlefield's senior ace needed to retire one more batter to wrap up a 10-0 victory over Loudoun Valley on Thursday night and she had every intention of doing it the easy way -- with a strikeout.

For the first time all season, the Bobcats weren't distracted by national rankings or an un-beaten record.

First place -- and a No. 1 seed in the Northwest Region Tournament -- was all that mattered.

Black paused briefly as she reached the pitching rubber, delaying her delivery to the plate just long enough to get a signal from catcher Courtney Liddle.

She used the idle seconds to softly juggle the softball in her right hand. Then she unleashed an-other two-strike offering toward the plate with just enough acceleration and elevation to make it unhittable.

With her seventh strikeout of the night, Black completed a two-hit shutout and the Bobcats (18-1) broke a first-place tie by avenging their only loss of the season.

"I just tried to keep them off balance," Black said. "Courtney's in charge of that. I don't have to worry about that."

All Black had to do was throw the ball where Liddle wanted it. And she used an array of change-ups, rise balls and screwballs to hold the potent Vikings scoreless for the second time this sea-son.

Just six days after Loudoun Valley (18-3) pulled even in the district race with a 4-3 victory in Pur-cellville, the Bobcats unleashed a 15-hit attack and shut down a team that took the field with a collective .422 batting average.

"We were waiting for that game," said shortstop Brittany Clendenny, who went 3 for 4 with an RBI double. "Having a loss made us realize we have to work at practice and every-thing isn't going to be just handed to us."

Battlefield made it look easy on Thursday. They countered four fielding errors with two exceptional defensive plays as sophomore third baseman Bailey Liddle turned a double play and Courtney Liddle threw Amanda Horton out on a steal attempt.

The Vikings, who have scored 185 runs in 21 games, had nine base runners. None of them ad-vanced farther than second base.

"Losing the other day really pumped us up for this game," Black said.

On the same day that they officially fell out of the USA Today Super 25 national rankings, the Bobcats scored the only run they needed in the first inning on a Black RBI single. They opened up a more comfortable three-run advantage on consecutive two-out base hits from Bailey Liddle and Kelsie Scott in the fourth and then piled on eight more runs over the final three innings.

"We don't win a trophy for a national ranking," Clendenny said. "You win trophies for district, regionals and state. It was fun in the beginning. Now we just want a tro-phy."

Seven different players collected at least one hit for Battlefield with Black going 3 for 5 and driving in four runs.

Scott was 3 for 4 and scored three times, Courtney Liddle was 2 for 5 with a RBI double and Shannon Cleary had two hits in three at-bats, while Katie Sutphin also singled in a run.

"Our hitting came alive today," Black said. "It's a great way to end the [regular] season, having a performance like this. We've all been waiting for that to hap-pen.

"There's always room for improvement, but we're definitely in a good place right now."