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Beat goes on for St. Anthony softball

By David La Vaque, Star Tribune, 05/17/11, 3:57PM CDT

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Undefeated Huskies looking solid in Class 2A

St. Anthony softball coach Lamar Brendemuehl credits a change in pitching distance and a sharpened focus for the havoc his Huskies have wreaked upon opponents.

The Huskies, participants in four of the past five Class 2A state tournaments, entered the week with a 14-0 record and a scoring differential of 175-23.

"I think moving the pitching rubber back three feet helped us a lot batting-wise and hasn't hurt us as much pitching-wise," Brendemuehl said.

Apparently. But St. Anthony, the No. 1 seed in Class 2A, Section 4, also drew motivation from past near-misses.

"Even when we've won our conference we've lost a game or two," Brendemuehl said. "Our goal was to go undefeated and win it outright. The girls did a nice job staying sharp all the way through."

The Huskies' top-five hitters did the most damage. Elaina Hamann, Mary-Clare Couillard, Becca Bates, Kenzie Hadler and Emily Olson combined to drive in 98 of the team's runs.

"I like this group because there's not one or two kids that do everything," Brendemuehl said.

Rainouts and spread-out section playoffs scheduling resulted in an interesting stretch of games for the Huskies.

They play Friday against the winner of No. 8 seed DeLaSalle and No. 9 Blake. Then the Huskies play three games Saturday and two games Monday against teams they would have played had two of their tournaments not been rained out.

Then, assuming the Huskies won their first playoff game, it's back to section tournament softball on May 25.

"We've got to get games in," Brendemuehl said. "And it should help us avoid what happened last season, when I felt we were not playing our best ball at the end."

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