Liberty’s softball season came to an end with a payback of sorts from Nazareth when the Blue Eagles defeated the Hurricanes, 10-0, in the District XI Class 6A playoffs last Wednesday at Nazareth.

It was just a week earlier when Liberty defeated Nazareth, 7-0, in the East Penn Conference playoffs.

“They came out and they hit the ball. They didn’t hit the ball in the first game,” said Hurricane coach Sam Carrodo. “Nazareth came out with a different attitude this game.”

Blue Eagles coach Tony Cocca changed that attitude by changing a few things for districts.

“The first thing we did was we worked hard on a game plan how to hit this pitcher. I shuffled the line up, and we hit line drives. We didn’t pop up today,” Cocca said. “What we worked on was target hitting, and they responded to it well. Obviously, Sam did a great job, but we hit the ball, and they didn’t, and that was the major difference.”

Nazareth scored six runs in the first inning, and a home run in the fourth by Paige Hahn made it 10-0.

In the fourth inning, Apryl Cruz gave Liberty momentary hope when she hit a hard line drive to center, but it was caught down low.

“We couldn’t get any kind of a rhythm started,” said Carrodo. “Samantha Gorkos just pitched a whale of a game, and we couldn’t get any runners on base.”

The Hurricanes tried again in the fifth inning with a single by Brooke Zigmund, and a walk by Mikayla Ruppert, but Liberty failed to score.

The Hurricanes will graduate five seniors, Ruppert, Cruz, Zigmund, Kira Kuhns, and Kyla Benner.

“I talked with each of the seniors because this was my first class. I individualized each one and what I thought of them. I’m very proud of them,” Carrodo said. “As for us, no one gave us a snowball’s chance in hell to be where we were with losing eight people from our district championship team. We came back and made it into the finals of leagues, made it into districts to the second round, and these girls didn’t quit.”