When her sister, Kelsey, graduated to move on to pitch at Penn State DuBois, it left a huge void in Warren’s pitching circle. Little sister stepped up.

In a battle of Region 5 leaders on Wednesday at Lady Dragons Field, Alana hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh and got the pitching win in Warren’s 8-7 nail biter over Conneaut.

“Alana just does what she does,” said Warren coach, and Alana’s mom, Carissa Stuart. “I was nervous that last at-bat with two strikes, and I kept pointing to my head, telling her to let (the high pitches) go. She kept fouling them off and she just looked at me like, ‘Don’t worry, I got this,’ and then she belts an even higher pitch out over the fence. That just comes down to true grit and wanting it. I can’t be more proud of her.”

The win lifts Warren to 10-2 in the region. Conneaut falls to 7-3 in Region 5. Villa Maria remains in second place at 9-2, a half game back.

Warren’s Halle Kuzminski sprints for third base in Warren’s 8-7 Region 5 win over Conneaut on Wednesday at Lady Dragons Field in Conewango Township. Times Observer Photo by Jon Sitler

“We told them before the game that it wasn’t going to be easy,” said Coach Stuart. “We told them, yes, you’re going to get tired, yes, you’re going to be hot, yes, we might fall behind, but keep telling yourselves that you can do it, push through and give all you can for 90 minutes, and they did. We definitely had some errors, and I thought we were playing a little too cautious at times defensively, and we could have had outs that would have saved a few of those runs. But I love their fight. I love that they’re sticking together and battling back.”

The Dragons got down 5-0 — keyed by Julianna Jacob’s’ bases-clearing triple down the left field line in the top of the fourth inning.

Warren answered with a five-run bottom half of the fourth. Katie Madigan and Lexi Hoffman had base hits before Alix Lytle’s one-out double. Then, Halle Kuzminski singled and Carly Beers was hit by a pitch. Kylie Fehlman cleared the bases herself with a triple.

“Kylie’s triple was huge,” said Coach Stuart. “I told her during their timeout, before her at-bat, that it’s just another at-bat — the outs, the runners on base don’t change anything — and she just stayed calm and collected through that whole at-bat and came through big-time.”

The game was far from over; Conneaut’s Linda Shepard hit her second homer of the game for a 6-5 lead.

In the bottom of the fifth, Madigan and Hoffman started with hits again, and scored on a sac fly by Kuzminski and single by Beers.

Conneaut tied the score at 7-7 in the seventh, but that only set up Stuart’s walk-off blast in Warren’s third win in three days.

Stuart allowed just three earned runs and struck out nine in the circle.

BASEBALL

PREP ROUTS WARREN

Cathedral Prep scored 10 third-inning runs, but wasn’t done there in a 22-2 Region 5 win over Warren on Wednesday at Old Legion Field.

The Dragons (3-10) lost their seventh straight, which started with a 10-0 loss at Prep on April 23.

The Ramblers (16-2) had won seven straight before a 6-3 Region 5 loss to McDowell on Monday at UPMC Park in Erie.

Prep remains in first place in the region at 11-1. Warren is 3-9 in Region 5.

Warren senior JT Blum had two of the Dragons’ five hits. He started on the mound and only three of 10 runs allowed were earned. The Dragons committed nine errors on top of Prep’s 15 hits.