Cranston Western Softball loses to North Carolina in the Little League World Series

GREENVILLE, N.C. — After just 17 minutes of Friday’s game, rain forced a stoppage of Cranston Western’s matchup in the Little League College World Series. Already trailing, coach Lalo Marcano and the team were hoping that Pitt County had already done the bulk of its damage.

Unfortunately for Cranston Western — the New England Region champion — it only got worse.

Pitt County, the North Carolina champion, scored four times prior to the rain delay, five more times during the balance of the first inning after the game resumed and sped away to a 16-0 victory in a game that was shortened to 2½ innings due to the 15-run mercy rule.

“Tomorrow is another day,” Marcano said he told his team. “We still have another game tomorrow. We’ll just have to move on.”

Including the rain delay, the first inning took 51 minutes to play. After Pitt County starter Braelyn Johnson struck out Cranston Western in order to start the game, teammate Aurora Edwards smashed the first pitch of the bottom of the inning for a triple. Two pitches later, Johnson singled to right field to begin the scoring.

More: Cranston Western gets off to a rousing start at the Little League Softball World Series

At 6:17 p.m., the rain got so intense the game to be stopped. At that point, Cranston Western was already trailing, 4-0, and had yet to get an out. When the game resumed at 6:38, Marcano pulled starter Olivia Graziano and put Isabella Marcano in the circle.

Pitt County continued its offensive onslaught, picking up where it left off and posting nine runs in the inning. It finished with six hits and sent 13 batters to the plate. North Carolina added seven more runs in the second.

Cranston Western got a leadoff walk from Lawson Bastia to start the second inning, a two-out single from Annabella Olobri, and a walk to Laila Murphy to load the bases. But Johnson responded with a strikeout to end the threat.

Pitt County followed with seven runs in the bottom of the frame to end all doubt.

“When you play a good team like this, you have to be almost perfect, Marcano said. "We made a couple of mistakes that opened up the score early on, and we couldn’t recover after that. That’s a very good hitting team, and we just have to plan our pitching better.”

Cranston Western hadn’t played since Monday, when it beat Willcox, Arizona, 3-0. After the first two games of Tuesday’s schedule were played, Tropical Storm Debby dumped buckets of rain and wind to wipe out the original LLSWS slate that finally resumed on Friday. The rain and wind so badly damaged the original site for tournament at Stallings Stadium at Elm Street Park that officials moved action about a mile away to Max R. Joyner Stadium on the campus of East Carolina University.

The schedule for the weekend had yet to be released at press time on Friday night. Cranston Western will face West Point, the Mid-Atlantic Region champion, which beat Asia-Pacific Region champion Bacolod City from the Philippines, 2-0, earlier on Friday.

“I do believe that we have a good team that will compete,” Marcano said. “Today was not our day. Very simple.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Cranston Western Softball suffers tough loss to North Carolina