Hayfield Plays Way Back Into Contention

Windau Is the Key to Program's Revival

When South County opened for the 2005-06 school year and took the majority of its students from Hayfield, the latter's softball program lost many of its players. One who remained was Jennifer Windau, who immediately became the Hawks' starting pitcher as a freshman.

Since then, South County has become a two-time defending Virginia AAA Patriot District champion, while Hayfield has slowly tried to rebuild and reach a point where it can contend with the Stallions.

That has finally happened, thanks in large part to Windau.

"Offensively, we're not blowing people away," Hawks Coach Ron Giovannucci said. "But she keeps us in the game and that's been the key to our success."

Entering last night's game with Lake Braddock, Hayfield (15-2, 11-1) trailed South County (16-1, 12-0) by one game in the district. The two teams will face each other tonight in the regular season finale.

Windau will get the start, and she should be chasing a few records. The senior already set the single-season strikeout mark for Hayfield with 187, and before last night, she had 15 wins this year (one shy of tying the program record) and an ERA of 0.45 (the single-season record is 0.62). At the plate, she also had 20 RBI, five shy of the Hawks' record.

Speaking about the record she does own, Windau said, "I've been aiming for it since freshman year, so it was really exciting and showed all my hard work paid off."

Making Adjustments

Centreville started its season 2-3 with a pair of Virginia AAA Concorde District losses, but that was not wasted time. The Wildcats shuffled their lineup until they found the one that worked best, and they are 10-2 since.

"We definitely moved around a lot, trying to find places for people," senior pitcher Jessica Ferrick said. And I think after [going 4-1 during spring break at] Disney, we figured out where everyone should go for us to be successful."

Possible Second Chances

This week's rainy weather might have claimed several good games, but some of them might get a second chance next Friday, if those teams could advance to their respective region finals.

The most anticipated matchup, Broadneck-Chesapeake, was supposed to happen yesterday in the Anne Arundel County championship game, but it was canceled. Those schools, however, are the top two seeds in the Maryland 4A East Region and are poised to meet in the region final for the third straight season. After Broadneck won the county title game each of the past two years, Chesapeake has won both region crowns en route to consecutive state titles.

Unfortunately, the Howard County title game, pitting Hammond, which is in 2A South, and Howard, 3A East, will not get a regional revival. Nor will the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference's defacto championship game, matching undefeated McDonough (2A South) and Huntingtown (3A South). But top pitcher Melanie Mitchell and McDonough could see Hammond in the region semifinals next week, a reprisal of last year's region final, which McDonough won. Huntingtown, meantime, is poised for a rematch in the region final with defending 3A champion Northern, which defeated the Hurricanes in last year's region semifinals. Huntingtown beat Northern early in the season, 13-12.

One interesting result of the rainouts was the seeding undefeated Damascus received in the 3A West. State rules require teams to play a minimum of 14 games to qualify for one of the top four seeds in each region. Damascus had only played 12 prior to Tuesday's draw and received the ninth seed, meaning it will likely have to play all its games on the road in order to reach the state semifinals for fourth time in five years.

The state semifinals are scheduled for May 19 at Bachman Sports Complex in Glen Burnie, with four games occurring simultaneously at 4 and 7 p.m. The finals will be May 23 at the University of Maryland.