George, who was three days removed from her five-inning no-hitter against non-league foe Gray-New Gloucester High of Gray, Maine, matched her season-high in strikeouts with nine and overcame six walks and a hit batsman en route to her second two-hit shutout of the season. She has not allowed a run in her last 21 innings of work.

Clancy actually put up better numbers than George, as she struck out 11 batters and allowed only Paul's hit. Like George, she struggled with her control, walking five batters and plunking two of them with pitches, but unlike George, her wildness came back to haunt her.

With two outs and no one on base in the third, Clancy hit Marissa Speroni with a fastball and gave free passes to George and Rachel Baxter to load the bases for Paul, who jumped on the first pitch she saw from Clancy -- a fastball on the outer half of the plate -- and clocked it into the gap in right-center field.

That hit gave the Clippers a 3-0 command and Paul her third triple of the season, and three pitches later to the next batter, Katie Beauregard, Paul was able to race home with Cumberland's fourth run when Clancy fired a wild pitch that nearly hit Beauregard.

"Bethany's definitely earned her spot on this team," said Cumberland coach Marty Crowley, whose squad is 6-0 overall and 3-0 in the division. "She's such a good ballplayer, and the other girls in that inning gave her a chance to come to the plate and do some damage and she did. She went with the pitch and hit it into the gap and that was big."

An inning earlier, Clancy walked the first two batters she faced (George and Baxter) and hit Paul in the leg with a pitch to quickly load the bases, but that time, she worked her way out of the threat by getting Beauregard to pop out to second and striking out the next two batters she faced.

"She's been putting herself in tough spots," noted EP coach Rob Traverse, whose crew is 1-3. "She got out of that jam in the second inning, but then came the third inning and you know a hit's coming sooner or later. It's unfortunate because she pitched well in the first inning and after three (innings). I was happy with the way we played. That inning just hurt."

The Townies, who were coming off last week's tough-to-swallow 4-3 defeat to Cranston West High, had their best opportunity to break on the board in the second when Ashley Curti led off with a long triple drilled into the gap in left-center field.

After George came back to strike out the next batter, Caity Arico greeted her with a safety squeeze bunt. George sped in to field the bunt, but faked a throw to first base and spun around to catch Curti straying too far off third.

Later that inning, as well as the sixth and seventh, the Townies put runners on first and second, but George was able to escape those threats. Speroni, the Clippers' second baseman, helped George get out of the last two jams by orchestrating an inning-ending 4-3 double play in the sixth and then making a diving catch to her left of a line drive by Danielle Rizzini to end the game.

"Jillian pitched really well and our defense made the plays behind her," said Crowley. "I thought she battled early on and labored a little bit, but like any good pitcher, the deeper she gets into a game, the stronger she gets."

Clancy, who picked up the contest's other hit with a two-out line single to right in the sixth, also got stronger as the game progressed and retired 10 of the final 11 batters she faced. She notched eight of her final 10 outs with strikeouts and fanned her final five batters.

"We battled to the end," admitted Traverse. "It's a moral victory when you actually hit the ball better than the other team, but Cumberland's good. They're not going to make any mistakes, and we kind of shot ourselves in the foot today. In this division, if you put yourself in a position to fail, someone's going to make you fail."

While the Townies are back in action tomorrow with an 11 a.m. affair against St. Raphael Academy at the Hank Soar Complex, the Clippers are off until next week. Next Tuesday, they will take a long bus drive to Westerly High, and two days later, host also-unbeaten La Salle Academy, which along with defending state champ Bay View Academy, is considered one of the teams to beat this year.

"It's early on," said Crowley. "We like what we see so far, but we still have a long way to go. There's still a lot of games to be played and everyone out there is good. We're just trying to play one game at a time and there's no pressure on us. Everyone's chasing Bay View and La Salle because they're the favorites, not us."