Staff photo / Neel Madhavan South Range’s Kelly Szolek swings at a pitch Tuesday afternoon against Pymatuning Valley. Szolek went 2-for-3 in the Raiders’ 17-0 shutout victory.

BEAVER TOWNSHIP — South Range came into Tuesday’s district semifinal with one goal in mind — make a statement.

The Raiders made that statement loud and clear, blowing out Pymatuning Valley 17-0 in five innings to advance to Thursday’s district final.

“I’ve been preaching to the kids, you can’t play down to a team’s level, no matter what their record is,” said South Range head coach Jeff DeRose. “And (Pymatuning Valley) actually had a really good record, but they didn’t play anybody really good this year, and it showed (Tuesday).

“What I told everybody before the game, everybody’s 0-0 again. You’re playing to win the game. It’s not about getting reps anymore. Our schedule this year, we played up a lot. Even if we lost, it was good experience to play really good teams, and we’ve played some really good teams this year.”

From the first pitch of the game, South Range was relentless.

Raiders pitcher Juli Stachowicz struck out each of the first nine batters she faced, then at the plate, it took five batters before South Range recorded its first out. One after another, the hits just came and came.

“Honestly, we were just taking the ball where (Pymatuning Valley pitcher Baleigh Alderman) was pushing it to us,” Stachowicz said. “Nobody was really pulling it or anything. I know she was giving the righties a lot of outside, so they were pushing it to the right side of the field. For lefties, she was giving us inside, so it was just really what worked (Tuesday).”

Four straight hits led to five runs and the Raiders tallied seven runs in the first inning. Stachowicz hit a three-run blast during the frame, while Anna Aey added a solo shot of her own. Aey’s home run was the freshman’s first of the season.

“We’ve been talking about how we just cannot start off slow,” Aey said. “We needed to come out in the first inning and put a couple runs up and I’m really happy that we ended up doing that. I think it helps us pick up our game a lot so that we can continue to score more in the other innings.”

South Range added two runs in the second and one run in the third, before ending the game with another seven-run inning in the fourth.

Out of a possible 15 outs in the five-inning game, Stachowicz finished with 14 strikeouts and just one walk, while giving up just a single hit.

“She’s special,” DeRose said. “She’s really come a long way since the first week of the year.”

For the Lakers, they end the season 20-6.

“We had a heck of a season,” said Pymatuning Valley head coach Andrew Gray. “We didn’t face a pitcher like this at all, so coming in and seeing a girl like that for the first time, it’s tough. They have girls that play all year. We have girls that play two months out of the year and that’s it. So until we start changing our mindset and start to play that way, it’s going to be hard to beat teams like this.

“But I’m proud of our girls. We had a 20-win season, we won the NAC and we won sectionals. So I’m very proud of what we accomplished this year.”

With the win, the top-seeded Raiders advance to the Division III district final on Thursday to face No. 4 seed Poland. The Bulldogs defeated No. 5 seed Brookfield 10-3 on Tuesday in their semifinal.

“We’re going to see Poland again for the third time this year,” DeRose said. “We’re used to (Poland pitcher) Katie (McDonald). Obviously she’s going to throw a little harder. I don’t know if she has an offspeed like we saw (Tuesday). You saw we’re a little off-balance on the offspeed, but we’ll be ready for it.”