Magical ride comes to a halt

AMHERST – Throughout their tournament run to the state championship, the Tewksbury High Softball team had called themselves the “Comeback Kids”. It was a well earned nickname, as regardless of the circumstances and regardless of the deficit, it seemed the Redmen were never out of any game. That held very true in the state tournament, when the Redmen earned a pair of comeback victories, including erasing a 5-0 deficit in their 7-6 extra inning state semifinal win over North Attleboro as well as a 4-0 win over Dracut earlier in the tournament.

Which is why, despite facing a 3-0 deficit against Westfield heading into the bottom of the seventh inning of Saturday’s MIAA Division 2 State Championship game at UMass Amherst’s Sortino Field, there was still plenty of belief in the Redmen dugout, and in the stands that they could do it one last time and put an exclamation mark on their already spectacular season.

Alas, it was not meant to be for the No. 2 seed Redmen (19-6) this time around, as despite putting two runners on with one out and scoring one run, they were unable to complete the comeback and saw their season come to end with a 3-1 loss to the No. 4 Bombers (21-2) in a fast paced, well played game by two teams who left little doubt as to who the top two teams in Division 2 this season.

The victory by Westfield gave them their first state softball championship in school history.

In that seventh inning, sophomore outfielder Alyssa Adams, the extra inning hero of the semifinal win over North Attleboro, led off with a single, and moved to second when sophomore Avery Della Piana was retired on a fielder’s choice groundout to first. Adams moved to third on a single by freshman right fielder Sydney Whalen and scored on another single by sophomore left fielder Aislyn Davis to shallow center.

Whalen, however, had no choice but to hold up between first and second to make sure Davis’s ball dropped in center field, and when it finally did drop, she was forced out at second while Adams scored, making the score 3-1, but leaving the Redmen with two outs and a runner at first, as opposed to first and second with one out.

A groundout to the Westfield pitcher then put an end to the inning an end to the Redmen’s season, but not an end to the pride that Tewksbury coach Brittney Souza had in her team.

“You can’t take anything away from our kids. They played phenomenal all season. I feel like every game we played in the conference and in the playoffs was like a championship game,” Souza said. “And today was the same thing. They didn’t give up. They showed their persistence. We are the comeback kids. We fought until the last possible moment again today. I am proud of them. I am proud of our season and I hope we come back again next year and win this thing.”

The Redmen dug themselves an early hole that was just too much for them to overcome, falling behind 3-0 after three innings, allowing a single run in each of the first three frames.

Westfield jumped on top early when senior second baseman Carly James drew a one out walk and later scored on a two out double by junior catcher Kenzie Raymond, giving the Bombers a 1-0 advantage before the Redmen came to bat for the first time.

Despite two walks in the bottom of the first, the Redmen could not score off Westfield freshman pitcher Shea Hurley, and in the bottom of the second the Bombers increased their lead with an unearned run. Redmen pitcher Sam Ryan, who was outstanding all day (9 strikeouts, two earned runs) struck out the leadoff batter, but a passed ball on the third strike, an errant throw to first and then another error later in the inning led to another run and a 2-0 lead after two innings.

Westfield would add another in the top of the third when Raymond led off with a triple to center and scored one batter later on a single to center by sophomore first baseman Moja Premny. Suddenly, Westfield had a 3-0 lead, with only a couple of hard hit balls over the first three innings.

“I think the nerves kind of got the best of us today, at least at the beginning of the game,” Souza said. “It is a big stage for these kids to be playing on, but once we got past those first couple of innings, we really settled in. But you can’t give up a three-run lead in a championship game. It was just a little too much to overcome.”

It was made even more difficult by the outstanding pitching of Westfield freshman phenom Shea Hurley, who allowed just five hits and one earned run, while striking out five Redmen and walking only two, with both of those coming in the first inning.

“She moved the ball well, and I think we kind of let the nerves get to us early on at the plate too in those first three or four innings,” Souza said. “And then the last few innings we started to make better contact. But we ran into some outs that we shouldn’t have run into, and then we didn’t get a call on the foul ball, which didn’t help either. It seemed liked every time we got a little momentum it got taken away from us.”

The foul ball that Souza referred to was indeed a big moment in the game. With the Redmen facing that 3-0 deficit, senior Maddie Stovesand, the Redmen’s number nine hitter, appeared to leadoff of the bottom of the third with a double down the left field line. From the press box behind home plate, to the fans in the stands, and especially to Souza, who was coaching third base, the ball clearly looked like it had landed on the chalk in left field, meaning it was a fair ball.

However, the umpire in left field, who in fairness, did in fact, have the best view of the play, called the ball foul, doing so by pointing with his left arm into foul territory. It took several seconds before Stovesand and the Redmen even realized it had been called foul. Once they did realize it, a heated debate ensued, with the home plate umpire coming out to assist and eventually agreeing that the ball was foul.

Hurley would go on to strike out Stovesand for the first out of the inning, before retiring the next two batters as well. It is impossible to tell if the Redmen would have eventually scored if the ball had been called fair, especially with the way Hurley mowed down the next two batters. But, it was also impossible not to think of what could have happened for the Redmen if it had been called fair, and they had a runner on second, nobody out and the top of the order coming up.

“It’s unfortunate the umpires took the game out of our hands there, because in my opinion and I was standing right there, it was a fair ball,” Souza said. “And the umpire didn’t raise his hands, he pointed and the other umpire, the home plate umpire, who had said it wasn’t his play, was the one who called it a foul ball. To me, you don’t make that call in a big game like that in that situation, because it is a game changer and a deflator, and it kind of just took our momentum away in that moment.”

Tewksbury was never truly out of the game thanks to the pitching of Ryan, who at one point retired eight batters in a row and retired 12 of the final 13 batters she faced in the game allowing only five hits with four of them coming in the first two innings.

The Redmen meanwhile, did finally begin to figure out Hurley in the later innings with Adams (double in the fifth) and Ryan (single in the sixth), connecting for hits, before the pair of seventh inning hits, but it wasn’t quite enough to catch the Bombers.