Junior Emma Freeman continues to pile up the milestones in her high school pitching career as she surpassed a pair of them in the opening round of the PIAA tournament.

Thanks to her team’s win in the District 11 championship game, Freeman reached her latest accomplishments on her home field rather than having to open the PIAA tournament on the road as the Tigers have done in each of the past two seasons.

Even though they didn’t know much about Athens pitcher Gretchen Hiley, Northwestern hitters were quick learners and took an 11-0 win to advance to the PIAA quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, Athens hitters never figured out Freeman, who allowed just a walk in her first time through the order. In the third, Freeman struck out Danica May for her 200th strikeout of the season and then got Gretchen Schmieg for career strikeout number 499.

The milestone was officially reached the next inning when Freeman fanned Savannah Finan for number 500. A fourth-inning single by McKenna Jarvis was all that Athens could manage in five innings against Freeman.

“We didn’t know much about their hitters, so I just went after them with a lot of different things to find out what they could and could not hit,” said Freeman.

The Northwestern bats did some damage to Hiley in the third when they sent 13 hitters to the plate and scored eight runs on seven hits.

Abby Dunstan, Conner, and Ella Bressi all had an RBI single in the inning. Lizzie Diehl added a two-run single. When Dunstan came up for the second time in the inning, she just missed a grand slam and had to settle for a two-run ground-rule double to left that made it 9-0.

“It feels great to be able to contribute from the bottom of the lineup,” said Bressi of her two hits and two RBI against Athens. “It’s really exciting how we are playing right now and we felt we could come out today and do it even though we didn’t know a lot about their pitcher, but we knew she was really good.”

An inning later, the Tigers capped the scoring with two runs on an RBI single by Bressi and a fielding error. In all, Athens committed three errors in the game that resulted in seven unearned runs.

Rylee McGinley, Dunstan, Conner and Bressi all had two hits in the game.

“Before the game,” said Northwestern head coach Kate Farber. “I literally said to the girls, ‘I don’t know if today is going to be one of those days where we can score 11 runs, like we did in the district championship.’

“I wanted them to expect a much closer, maybe 2-1 type of game, but our bats came alive. I knew we could hit like that but against this pitcher I thought it was going to be much tougher and I’m really proud of our girls.”

Freeman’s mark of 200 strikeouts this season and 500 for her career are especially impressive considering that she still has a season of high school softball to play.

“I’ve been able to pitch every season, so that helps,” she said. “It also helps that Abby (Dunstan) and I have such a good relationship on what pitches to throw and how to set up hitters. We are usually on the same page and that helps a lot.”