The M&M girls combined for seven hits and seven RBI to pace LaBrae’s 12-hit attack.

“Polta was on the JV last year,” LaBrae coach Dmetra Noble said. “I knew she could hit. I was getting her ready for the varsity. She’s very powerful. We’re trying to get her to hone in on good pitches. She can hit it over on command with the right pitch.

“Meyer has gone from being a freshman to being a senior playing varsity. She knows what she needs to do. She’s fantastic at picking out her pitch and swinging. She stays in her zone and hits the pitches she wants.”

Both Polta (4 hits, 4 RBI) and Meyer (3 hits, double, 3 RBI) struck only when they got the pitches they were looking for as they stood in the box. Meyer scored all three times she was on base and Polta crossed the plate twice for the Vikings (7-2, 5-1).

LaBrae right-hander Arianna Geordan fires a pitch against Liberty in All-American Conference Blue Tier action on Tuesday evening in Liberty.

“When I saw a nice pitch down the middle, that was the one I wanted,” said Meyer, who hits third. “I normally don’t swing at the first pitch, but that was the one that was right down the middle.”

“Mine were all inside pitches,” Polta, the cleanup batter, said. “That’s my main pitch to launch the ball into the outfield. They were all inside and that’s my favorite pitch to hit.”

The success of Meyer and Polta bled over to the rest of the team.

“Everyone was cheering and lifting everyone else up,” Polta said. “Everybody was cheering everybody else on.”

“We had a lot of confidence,” Meyer said. “We’d get one good hit and the rest of the team was confident they’d do it, too. If one person got a hit, the rest of the team wanted the same thing.”

LaBrae scored at least once in four of its five at-bats and netted a minimum of four runs in three of the five frames — including the first. In none of the innings were the Vikings retired in order.

“(An early lead) makes it a lot more fun to play,” Polta said. “You have that cushion where you don’t have to worry about making mistakes.”

“(The early lead was good for us), especially for the pitcher,” Meyer said. “When we know we’re ahead, we’re more comfortable. We have that much more room to work. We’re more confident that it’s our game to win.”

The first-inning outburst was exactly what Noble wanted to see.

“That’s the key to winning any game,” she said. “We want to get the first strike and close the door first. We strive to get going early.”

“They were definitely aggressive at the plate,” Liberty coach Andrew Wilde said. “They knew how to attack the ball. They put the ball in play and we didn’t always make the plays. We’re young and learning. It’s a learning process. We’re definitely learning every game.”

Brittany Stassinis and Marissa Roberts set the table nicely for the two Morgans. Each of the girls was on base in three of her four plate appearances. Roberts reached on a pair of errors, walked and scored all three times she was on base. Stassinis had two hits, an RBI and scored twice. Hannah Hill, Corrina Morrow and Kate Gibson all had hits, as well.

Arianna Geordan worked all five innings for the Vikings. She allowed one run on four hits, walked one and fanned four.

“Arianna got a compound fracture in her leg in November during indoor,” Noble said. “She’s striving to get stronger and better. She’s pitching more innings to get herself back in form. The heat helps.

“She has movement and can make it break. If she’s not moving it, things get ugly for us. She was hitting her spots today.”

The Leopards (2-8, 2-5) plated their lone run in the third. Morgan Orr singled with one out and was followed by Savannah Houk with a run-scoring single.

“Today, we battled for the first few innings,” Wilde said. “As the lead grew, I saw their heads start to go down instead of looking at the next play. We were looking at where we were not going to make a mistake instead of where we could make a play.

“We were down, 4-0, but we still hung in. We got a few hits in the first inning and in the second and third we started to battle back. I was pleased with that.”

Ali Longo and Melanie Bardol had the other two hits for Liberty.