The Gilmour softball team felt they let one slip away in last year’s season-ending tournament loss to Marlington. If the early returns this spring are any indication, the Lancers are intent on making up for that loss and going even further this season. Led by home runs by Ava Gundling and Molly Mc Crone, the visiting Lancers beat Mentor, 9-3, on April 5 to run Gilmour’s record to 3-0 . “We just want to win, honestly,” said Gundling, a junior who has committed to the University of Maryland. “We want to make it far in the playoffs. Last year we got cut short, so we just want to win. Our bonding is great. This is our year.” It was certainly the Lancers’ day on April 5. Gilmour wasn’t originally scheduled to play Mentor, but when a team backed out of a three-team event at Mentor, the Lancers decided to pick up the contest even though they will play the Cardinals again on May 5. Coach Tony Bondra’s team scored early and often against the Mentor squad, which is coached by his niece Jo. A sacrifice fly by Ella Jackson gave Gilmour a 1-0 lead in the first before a five-run uprising in the third blew the game wide open. Gundling hit a mammoth two-run homer to left to start the run, and then Lilly Dinehart and Camden Dreiling hit back-to-back doubles later in the frame to open up the six-run lead. “I don’t think any of those hits were cheap,” Tony Bondra said. “All I saw was line drive after line drive after line drive.” And that was without slugging first baseman Hailey Gray out of the lineup, as she was with the Gilmour volleyball team for the day. A wild pitch in the fourth allowed Aiden Pike to scamper home from third to make it a 7-0 game. Meanwhile, Mentor (3-4) was having trouble stringing anything together against Gilmour’s Dreiling. Maggie Haydu reached on a single to start the second, but was stranded on second. Two innings later, she reached on an error but was stranded on third. “(Gilmour) has a good offensive lineup,” Jo Bondra said. “They put the ball in play. That’s something we’re going to try and figure out – how to string more hits together. We are getting base-runners. We are hitting the ball, but we’re just not putting people on base and moving people over.” Gundling doubled, went to third on a wild pitch and then scored on another errant pitch to make it 8-0 in the fifth. Then McCrone blasted a towering homer to left-center in the sixth to make it 9-0. Mentor finally got on the board in the sixth with an RBI triple by Sarah Smalley and an RBI double by Haydu, but the damage had already been done. “To be down big and still put the ball in play and have good swings and have our energy up, that was good to see,” Jo Bondra said. “Down five we’re still in it, down six we’re still in it — we just have to start hitting a little earlier.” Hitting hasn’t been a problem at all for Gilmour this season. Then again, neither has pitching or defense. Gundling said she’s known from the get-go that “this was going to be a special year,” and thus far the Lancers are backing up here thoughts. As well as the thoughts of her coach. “Behind kids like (Gundling), we’re a strong team,” he said. “Today we proved that. We’re about one-tenth the size of Mentor. That’s no disrespect to them. She’s got a great team over there and she’s a great coach. But I think today we proved we can pay with anyone in the area.” The score Gilmour 9, Mentor 3 ...read more read less