BELLEVILLE • Newly minted as the top team in the STLhighschoolsports.com large-schools rankings, junior Tomi Dublo made sure Alton kept its record unblemished with a 4-2 victory over host Belleville East in eight innings Thursday.

Dublo belted a two-out, two-run home run in the top of the eighth to provide the winning margin for the Redbirds (8-0 overall, 2-0 Southwestern Conference) against East (7-3, 1-1, No. 3 LS), the previous top-ranked team.

Before hitting the home run, her third of the season, Dublo was hitless in the game. She drove in senior Katelyn Presley, who opened the eighth with an infield single.

"I wasn't looking for anything special," Dublo said. "As you can see I was struggling at the beginning. I just came out and had to keep a positive attitude and do what I had to do for my team. I didn't know it was out. I was hoping obviously."

Dublo's heroics made a winner of senior Brittany Roady, who improved to 8-0 and notched her sixth complete game.

Roady struck out seven and set the Lancers down in order four times, including the seventh and eighth innings.

East scored both of its runs in the sixth when junior Jessica Belzer started a rally with a double. Sophomore pitcher Kristina Bettis had the key hit with a one-out single through the infield that scored Belzer and Sierrah Baffa, a courtesy runner for Alexandria Boze, who reached base on a fielder's choice.

East could have taken the lead, but had a runner tagged out at the plate trying to score on a passed ball.

"We did a nice job to get that runner on the passed ball or that would have been the game," Alton coach Dan Carter said. "We settled down, got the runner on and Tomi did a nice job of driving the ball over the fence."

Alton scored single runs in the fourth and sixth to take a 2-0 lead.

Junior Bronte Fencel singled in junior Savannah Fisher for the Redbirds' initial tally. Freshman Tami Wong, who had reached on a two-base throwing error, scored on a wild pitch for the second run.

After falling behind 2-0, East had its big rally, but other than in the sixth Roady frustrated the Lancers' hitters.

"We've got to square ball up and for whatever reason, right now, we're just not," East coach Natalie Peters said. "From the top to the bottom of our order it just seems like we've got kids all the way up and down the order popping it up. We'll work on it. We'll get back at it because we definitely have good hitters on this team."

Meanwhile for the Redbirds, things couldn't be going better. They beat top-three teams O'Fallon and East this week, including handing O'Fallon its first loss.

"It was a pretty darn good week," Carter said, "I'll take that any time. I told the girls, what I just said was, 'Enjoy the heck out of this one tonight, but come into practice ready to work tomorrow, because we have Edwardsville on Tuesday.' And like I've been saying all year, until someone knocks them off, they're at the top of the heap. They are still Edwardsville and they are still the Southwestern Conference reigning champions."