By Allison Goldsmith
I&M Sports Editor
The semifinals have been a difficult playoff hurdle for the Whalers softball team to clear. Nantucket was eliminated from the Division III South sectional postseason tournament in the semifinals for the second straight season Tuesday, this time falling to Bristol-Plymouth 8-2 in Taunton.
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Photos by Nicole Harnishfeger
The Whalers lost in the semifinal round of the Division III South tournament Tuesday against Bristol-Plymouth after beating Diman and Bourne at home. Clockwise from top: Jess Guevara is tagged out at home by Diman catcher Michelle Pelton. |
Prior to Tuesday’s loss, the Whalers’ run through the postseason included a thrilling come-from-behind victory over Bourne 10-9 at home Friday in the first round and a solid 9-7 win over Diman Sunday.
Nantucket finished the season with a 17-6 record.
“This is a super group of kids. It was a great season. They never quit, and they never quit (Tuesday) either. They kept scraping,” head coach Chris Maury said.
Tuesday’s loss to Bristol-Plymouth was also Maury’s final game as head coach. He’ll be taking over as Nantucket High School athletic director at the end of the month.
“What I do as a coach, I will do the same thing as the athletic director with a lot more kids. I wouldn’t trade the last 15 years for anything,” he said.
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Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger
The Whalers softball team comfort each other after a disappointing loss on Sunday in the Division III South Sectional Semi-finals.
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The Whalers managed only one hit against Craftsmen ace Samantha Doyle. The hard-throwing junior struck out 11 batters, while giving Nantucket an opportunity to score with six walks.
“I knew coming in she was quick. She is a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ type of pitcher. When she is on, she is on. When she is not, you could see her control was not good. The problem was, we could not hit the ball. We could not make it happen,” Maury said.
While the Whalers were struggling to mount any offensive attack, the Craftsmen were making solid contact against ace Olivia Hull as well as capitalizing on Nantucket’s struggles in the field.
“Tournament games are close games against good teams. You can’t make mistakes and you have to take advantage of other teams’ mistakes,” Maury said.
Bristol-Plymouth got on the board in the third inning when Courtney Goyette singled with the bases loaded and no outs to drive in one run. Hull escaped further damage on three quick outs without allowing another run.
The Craftsmen would bounce back and load the bases again in the fourth inning, and this time made their mark with five runs on two Nantucket errors and five hits. Doyle knocked an RBI triple in the fifth inning to give B-P some breathing room at 8-0.
“I was trying to give Olivia the opportunity to finish the ballgame. She got two outs and a ground ball rolled through. We had the opportunity to get out of the inning,” Maury said.
Kelly Reid came on in relief in the sixth inning and held the Craftsmen hitless.
“Olivia has been our horse all season long. She flat-out ran out of gas today. Kelly did a great job in relief, which bodes well for the future,” Maury said.
The Whalers had an opportunity to get on the board when Doyle walked Jess Guevara, Shantel Hanniford and Kelly Reid with two outs in the third. Lindsay Fry grounded out to short to end the inning.
The sophomore shortstop came up again with the bases loaded in the fifth inning and came through with a two-run single to score Sally Benson and Hanniford to put the Whalers on the board. Nantucket did not have a base-runner in the final two innings.
Quarterfinals
Against Diman Sunday at home, the Whalers came out on fire in the rematch against the team that knocked them out of the semifinal round of the tournament last season.
“The energy level, anyone that was there could see, it was great. That is the kind of energy and attitude you need coming into a game like that,” Maury said.
The Whalers scored two runs each in the first and second innings. In the first, Reid picked up the two-out hit and scored on a double from Fry. Morgan Dugan drove home Fry with an infield single.
The Bengals responded with two runs of their own in the top of the second, capitalizing on a Nantucket error with two outs. Hull escaped the bases-loaded jam without further damage.
Nantucket responded with two more in the second to re-take the lead. Benson earned the bases-loaded walk to drive in one and then after two force plays at the plate, Reid drove in the second with a single.
Cassie Moran, Grace-Anne Tornovish and Guevara drove in runs in a four-run third inning to break things open, but even at 8-2 the Bengals were still within reach.
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Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger
Grace-Anne Tornovish looks to third-base coach Chris Maury for a sign.
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They chipped away with three in the fourth and one each in the fifth and sixth innings. They got some timely hitting and some generous calls from the umpiring crew.
Hull got out of the fourth and sixth innings with a strikeout and induced the ground-out to short in the sixth, stranding runners on second base in each case.
“She did a nice job of keeping her composure, but she has all year long. We made some fielding mistakes, it hurt us, it could have hurt us worse than it did if she doesn’t keep her composure and keep making things happen,” Maury said. “We made the game closer than it needed to be, but we never quit and made the plays we needed to at the end of the game.”
In the final inning, Diman’s Ashley Bouchard led off with a bomb to deep center field, which was hauled in by Hanniford for the highlight defensive play of the game.
“There is not another soul we have seen on the softball diamond that makes that catch. She is just so fast,” Maury said.
With no threat on base, Hull got the next two batters to ground out to end the game.
Comeback kids
It looked like the end of the season for the Whalers Friday against Bourne in the first round of the tournament. Nantucket trailed 9-3 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning. They hadn’t been able to score more than one run in an inning all game, and faced a six-run deficit.
“Momentum is a great thing. Once we started getting people on base and started collecting hits, the more runs that crossed the plate, the more people started to believe we could do this,” Maury said.
The first six batters of the inning reached base. Molly Lentowski was hit by a pitch, Dugan reached on an error and Moran singled. Whitney Butler drove in the first run with a single and Benson followed with another RBI single. Guevara loaded the bases with no outs.
But the Whalers were still trailing 9-6 and down to their last out after Hanniford popped out to the pitcher and Butler was cut down at home on an attempted steal on a passed ball.
Reid got things back on track with a two-run single to right field to pull Nantucket within one. Fry singled Reid to third base and made the heads-up move to second on the throw. On the first pitch to Lentowski, Reid sprinted home on the passed ball to tie the game at 9-9 with the winning run sitting on third base.
Lentowski was hit by a pitch for the second time in the inning, which set the stage for Dugan. The junior left-fielder rattled a single up the middle to plate Fry with the game-winning run.
“It was a terrific feeling. I have been coaching for a while here and I can say we had a great comeback win against the Vineyard a number of years ago for a Cape and Islands League championship, but nothing like this. It was a total team effort. Everyone had to come to the plate and everyone had to do something and they did it,” Maury said.
Bourne came out fired up for the game, scoring four times on three hits and an error in the first inning and adding five runs on three hits, an error and two walks in the second inning for the 9-1 advantage.
In the first inning the Canalmen lost starting pitcher Kiya Gifford on an awkward play at the plate, where she injured her knee and had to be removed from the game.
Breanne Aflague came on to face the Whalers. Nantucket cut into the lead with one in the first, when Guevara scored on a ground-out by Reid, and one in the third on a bases-loaded walk from Dugan. The Whalers left the bases loaded in the third and again in the fifth without being able to put up big numbers.
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