RURAL STREATOR – Shae Simons summed it up best after striking out 12 and not allowing a baserunner in Woodland/Flanagan-Cornell’s season-opening 10-0 win Tuesday over visiting Hall.

“It was a perfect day to have a perfect game,” Simons said. “Senior year, first game, I couldn’t ask for a better beginning.”

Nor could the Warriors (1-0), who rode Simons’ perfect game and scored in every inning, finishing with a walk-off, RBI single past a drawn-in infield by – who else? – Simons.

“Just coming in today knowing it’s our home field, and we don’t get many openers at home, and going in my safe place, that circle,” Simons said. “It was just amazing being out here again.”

Two of the first three Hall batters – leadoff hitter/Red Devils starting pitcher Charlie Pellegrini and No. 3 batter/catcher Caroline Morris – managed to put the ball in play in the first inning, a groundout to WFC third baseman Emma Palaschak and pop fly to Warriors shortstop Olivia Chismarick. Simons recorded Ks for 11 of the final 12 outs, the only exception Chismarick’s rundown of a high fly behind third base to lead off the fifth.

“Shae was excellent, and we had two freshmen playing the corners in place of our seniors that are injured, [and Palaschak and 1B Lilly Libby] and Olivia at short stepped up and made what few plays were in front of them,” WFC coach Mike Hoekstra said.

“We were focused on our hitting today, focused on getting bunts down and improving our at-bats, and I think we got three down out of four bunt tries and hit up and down the lineup.”

The Warriors offense was led by two singles apiece from Palaschak and Simons; a 1-for-1 day with two runs scored courtesy of No. 9 hitter Jaylei Leininger; single RBIs off the bats of Chismarick, Simons, Kaylee Henert, Tiffany Rustman, Kaiden Connor and Leininger; and a two-hit day including a double, triple and three runs batted in from cleanup hitter/catcher Ella Derossett.

While WFC left the game batting .500 as a team, Hall could not find any offensive success.

“Our at-bats could have been better,” second-year Red Devils coach Ellie Herrmann said. “We’ve got a young team still, and we don’t have a lot of experience hitting riseballs like [Simons’]. We have to make that adjustment, because we know we’ll see a lot of pitchers with riseballs this season. I think our at-bats could definitely improve with that small adjustment.

“Our pitchers [Pellegrini 3 IP, 4 ER, 2 K; Kaitlyn Coutts 1.1 IP, 3 ER, 1 K] did really well, I thought, and our defense was improved. I thought we definitely made the plays we could. Woodland just found the holes today.”

The Warriors scored two runs in both the first and second innings, one in the third, four in the fourth and the mercy-rule enforcer with one out in the fifth, Leininger drawing a leadoff walk and scoring on Simons’ sharp grounder into left-center.

Woodland/Flanagan-Cornell is scheduled to play Friday at Gardner-South Wilmington.

Hall is off until Monday when the Red Devils host their own home opener against Rock Falls.