'I Think We Had a Great Season'

By Frank Rizzo
MONTICELLO — August 4, 2000 – Coach Pat Shuart said that any win her Monticello Little League Senior girls picked up after their first-ever District 19 championship was “gravy.”
District 19 covers all of Orange and parts of Sullivan counties.
Shuart was still feeling upbeat despite her team’s losing both games in the New York State Little League Senior girls’ tournament in Queens last Saturday.
“I think we had a great season, we weren’t outclassed at all,” said Shuart, whose only complaint with the state tourney was “the crummy conditions of the fields.”
Monticello, which added a Section II title to its achievements this season, lost in the first game of the double elimination tourney to Long Beach, 9-8.
It was then ousted by Ozone-Howard Beach 4-0.
Long Beach scored three runs in the sixth to break a 5-5 tie, and added another in the seventh.
In the bottom of the seventh, Monticello scored three runs and had runners at first and second when Samantha Lynch-Stefl flied deep for the third out.
Amelia Devlin pitched two innings, then was relieved by Crystal Forget in the third. Megan Drobysh came on to pitch in the middle of the fifth.
Lynch-Stefl had two hits, including a double, and Drobysh and Amanda DeSimone added two hits apiece.
In the second game Monticello was limited to three hits — two by Forget and one by Drobysh — and Drobysh took the loss.
Monticello was playing with just nine players. Two other members of the team — Smallwood’s Kim Donohue and Shannon Dietrich — were playing in a national tournament with the Erie Belles fast pitch team out of Port Jervis.
Shuart noted that many of her players have been together since the early Little League and have also been on the Monticello HS modified and junior varsity teams.
The Monticello jayvees have lost just two games in the past two years.
Dennis Dietrich of Smallwood, father of Shannon, praised the work of Monticello HS coaches Dan Orlan and Kyle Hoar.
James DeSimone of Monticello also coached the Monticello Little League Senior squad.

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