Saturday morning was a slow start all together. There was some light rain early on around 8 am. Our girls team had the first game of the day since they were hosting the Classic. The game started around 10:30 after the slight rain delay. The game itself was very slow to start with the game being scoreless until the 3rd inning. That’s when Kate Rittenbaugh hit a double to lead the 3rd inning off. “That was the real start to the day we needed, I think after this game we will have a lot of momentum going into the championship game,” said Coach Ryan Leffler. After that double the girls found what they needed and put up a staggering 12 runs in two innings to beat Shikellamy 12-1.

The next game for the Lady Cardinals was at 4 in the afternoon. It was against Glendale. Glendale was not the best team ever but they came to play. The game was slow and was scoreless until Glendale scored off of back to back doubles in the 4th inning. With the game on the line Pine Grove girls scored a run to tie the game in the 5th. Glendale scored off of a sacrifice bunt in the 7th inning which put the pressure back on Pine Grove. The next inning was typical of Pine Grove in crunch time. They got a runner on 1st and stole second. After that they bunted the runner to 3rd and used two outs to get one hit to tie. When asked about sending the game to extra innings, Coach ‘Muk’ Kreiser said, “We’ve been there many times where we need one run and we did exactly what we practice and it worked out perfectly.”  The inning ended and the game was going into extra innings.

With the game tied in extra inning Glendale was the first to hit. They got themselves into a bases loaded situation but senior pitcher Olivia Lehman struck out two batters and made the final out at first to retire the side. With Pine Grove up to bat they needed to score one run to win. Casey Kershner started on second. After a sacrifice bunt to move her to 3rd became a double after an error it was clear the game was about to be over. Olivia Lehman came up to bat needing just one hit with two runners in scoring position. On the 3rd pitch she hit a line drive to right field and the two runners on base scored. The game was over 4-2 and the Lady Cardinals had won the Cardinal Classic. After the game Olivia Lehman said, “I’m so happy we won this my senior year, I love this team.”