Softball: Sophomore Brie Ruppert throws no-hitter in La Salle-Peru’s win over Rochelle

LA SALLE – Going into the season, La Salle-Peru softball coach Randy Huebbe knew his team would have a strong pitching staff.

But to start the year, sophomore Taylor Vescogni was on a pitch count and sophomore Brie Ruppert still was recovering from a monthslong injury.

The duo now is rounding into form.

Vescogni threw a no-hitter in the Cavaliers’ Interstate 8 Conference opener Monday, and Ruppert followed with one of her own in a 10-0, five-inning victory over Rochelle in an I-8 game Wednesday at the L-P Sports Complex.

“I think it’s super cool that both pitchers can do that,” Ruppert said. “I’m sure our other pitchers can do that, too. It’s a really hard thing to do because most of these teams are very efficient hitters. I think it means a lot to the team. We all get super excited about it.”

Ruppert struck out 10 batters, including four in a row in the second and third innings, while walking four batters and hitting two.

She did not allow a ball to be hit out of the infield and induced a 6-4-3 double play to end the game.

“It feels so good,” Ruppert said. “I just came back off an injury for a few months. It feels so nice to be out there. I’ve been working on mechanics. It feels so good it’s all coming together.”

Huebbe said it’s good to have Ruppert back to form a strong one-two punch with Vescogni.

“She’s coming back from an injury. We’ve been working her in practice trying to get her strength up,” Huebbe said. “She hasn’t pitched in six months. She’s getting to where she’s starting to really have confidence in every pitch. It’s nice to see because that’s a nice complement to Taylor.

“As a coach, it’s nice [to have two pitchers capable of throwing no-hitters back-to-back]. We went into the season knowing we were going to have a really good pitching staff. When we started off with Taylor on a pitch count and Brie was down, it was like, ‘Oh boy, here we go.’ We got Taylor back and now Brie, and Brie’s going to get stronger. It’s going to be nice to have them on back-to-back days. I trust our other pitchers, too. Lambo [Ava Lambert] and [Callie] Mertes are pretty darn good, too.”

The L-P offense gave Ruppert plenty of support from the start with three runs in the first inning.

No. 2 hitter Karmen Piano doubled off the wall with one out. With two outs, Lambert hit an RBI single and Allie Thome ripped a two-run double.

In the second, the Cavs scored three runs on two outs as Meres hit a two-run single and Lambert smacked an RBI double.

The Cavs scored a run in the third and tacked on three more in the fourth to end the game.

Vescogni and Thome had back-to-back RBI singles in the fourth, and Raleigh Leininger hit a sacrifice fly in the fourth.

“We just put the bat on the ball every inning,” Piano said. “We focused on line drives. We knew we just had to put the bat on the ball and score some runs.”

Piano finished 3 for 3 with a double and three runs for L-P (9-3, 2-0 I-8). Thome and Lambert each were 2 for 3 with Thome delivering three RBIs and Lambert recording two.

“That’s always been our forte, we score runs,” Huebbe said. “They were happy, but as the coach I see some things we’re doing wrong, things we’ll work on that I thought we could have done a little bit better. We’re scoring with two outs all the time. We have to do a better job of setting up our hitters. I like what I saw. We sprayed it all over the field and it was line shots.”