JEFFERSON — Field advanced to its fifth straight softball district championship game Tuesday evening.
The Falcons aren't taking it for granted. Not with how hard it is to win postseason games.
After winning Monday's sectional title game by a run, No. 4 Field was tested yet again the next day in a 7-3 district semifinal victory over No. 5 Howland.
"It's hard to get to district championship [games] to begin with," Falcons junior Olivia Dyer said. "It's something to be proud of to just get back so many times."
Don't let the final score deceive you. The game was mostly played within a margin of two, with the Tigers tying the score in the top of the fourth and drawing within a run in the sixth.
Up 4-3, the Falcons (23-3) pulled away for good with a three-run sixth, sparked by junior Mckayla Miller's leadoff double to cap an eight-pitch at-bat.
"The stress was there all game," Miller said. "When we came into the dugout, we knew, like, this is our chance to put them away, put them down and make it a lot easier for us in the top of the seventh."
Tia Ulrich followed by lining an 0-2 pitch to the right-field gap and fellow junior Delilah Rahe scored Miller with a double that sliced deep down the left-field line to make it 5-3. Another insurance run scored on a wild pitch, with Rahe alertly running home, and yet another run scored on sophomore Lilli Sutkowy's single up the middle.
Field's Maddie Burge shows tremendous grit
The challenge the Tigers posed immediately became clear as their first three hitters hit the ball sharply against Falcons ace Maddie Burge. Two of those three liners dropped, including Brooke Tatar's RBI double.
Up 1-0, Howland threatened to take a much bigger lead, working a couple of walks — on eight and seven pitches, respectively — to load the bases.
That's when Burge and catcher Averi Weis took over. Weis threw out a runner trying to take third on a ball in the dirt and Burge ended the threat with two picture-perfect rise balls for an inning-ending strikeout.
"It's definitely about having the trust behind your back," Burge said. "Your defense backing you up definitely plays a part in it because you feel comfortable. Like, if they hit this ball, I trust my defense, and Coach Bob [Bauer] called a great game, so I just throw what he pitches."
Burge showed poise all afternoon, also stranding multiple runners in the third and sixth.
"She has a lot of grit out there," Beth Dyer said. "It's kind of my word of the year, I think, is just sometimes we're not at our best, but we have to have some grit and I think she threw a very good ballgame."
While Burge managed to work her way out of a few jams, limiting the dangerous Tigers to three runs in six innings, the Falcons took advantage of the opportunities they did have, stranding just three runners.
That included capitalizing on Sutkowy's single to lead off the first, as junior Kailyn Gressman bashed a double to the left-field gap to drive her home. Gressman then advanced to third on a fly and scored the Falcons' second run on a Miller groundout.
"Every time, [it's] what are you doing?" Beth Dyer said. "Are you able to move the runners and put them into scoring position so somebody else can do something? So we do talk about quality at-bats and keep track of that, and I do think they executed that pretty well today."
The Falcons were no less resourceful in their two-run fourth, stringing together five straight productive at-bats. After Miller and Ulrich ripped back-to-back singles to start the inning, Rahe advanced both with a deep fly. Junior Jessica Pollard drove Miller home with a single up the middle and Olivia Dyer brought home another with a slick safety squeeze.
"I saw that it was an outside pitch and I just thought, 'Get it down,'" Dyer said. "Just make sure it doesn't pop up."
Top-seeded Aurora is next for Field.
"I just told them today, I got a little emotional because I feel like it's always our goal to compete for a district championship, and for some reason I didn't realize it was the [fifth] year in a row that we achieved our goal of getting back to it," Beth Dyer said. "Yeah, we want to obviously win a district championship, but the first step is to get here.
"It's fantastic. It's something that you don't ever take for granted, and a lot of work goes into it so it's something that we're going to enjoy, too."
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: 'It's something to be proud of': Field softball makes fifth straight district title game
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