Mercier proud of team’s resolve
Northmen battled back from deficits to beat Barrington in 11
NORTH SMITHFIELD — Hope Trowbridge walked to the batter’s box in the bottom of the 11th inning of Thursday’s Division II marathon contest against Barrington with her team down to its last out and trailing by a pair of runs.
While the situation appeared to be dire, the Northmen had been battling back the entire afternoon. The Northmen scored two runs in the seventh to send the contest to extra innings. They scored three more in the eighth and one in the 10th to keep their hopes of staying in first place alive.
“I just told Hope that all she had to do was get on base because Lorenza (O’Donnell) was going to hit a home run,” North Smithfield coach Paul Mercier said from his team’s third-base dugout on a rainy Friday afternoon.
Trowbridge, like many of her teammates had done earlier in the game, kept the Northmen’s hopes alive with a double to plate Jen Pasquariello, who started the inning on second base per international tiebreaker rules.
O’Donnell, who didn’t have much success against Barrington all-division hurler Paige Concannon in her first five at-bats, stepped into the batter’s box against reliever Allison Senechal. O’Donnell crushed Senechal’s first pitch over the left field fence and against the fence that separates the athletic complex from a parking lot abutting North Smithfield Middle School to secure a 16-15 11inning win.
“This team did not want to lose this game – they stayed in it the whole time,” Mercier said. “We were behind in about eight of the 11 innings. We started battling and battling, and I knew this team was not going to quit. It was a playoff atmosphere.
“We haven’t had that because we’ve been playing down to our opponents recently. We have six players at new positions making mental mistakes. Thursday, I could see them digging in and trying to think about what to do. It was just beyond a regular game. This meant more to them.”
North Smithfield ( 10- 1 Division II) is now tied in the loss column with South Kingstown for first place, but the Northmen own the tiebreaker over the Rebels by virtue of their victory last week. The Northmen have already played the toughest portion of their schedule and own wins over the Rebels, Portsmouth and the Eagles.
The toughest remaining games between now and the playoffs are Tuesday’s contest against Tanya Cooper and Davies and Monday, May 15’s visit from Johnston.
“Right now, we have to maintain and go for that No. 1 seed,” Mercier said. “We have the tiebreaker over everyone except Mount. We have to play hard, we can’t play down to the level of our opponent. We still have Davies at home and Tanya Cooper is a great pitcher. We’re going to have Johnston here, so we have to play those games.”
Barrington (6-2 Division II) still has to play Portsmouth and South Kingstown, but the Eagles know they can’t win tiebreakers against the Northmen or the Mounties come playoff time. Thursday, the Eagles received a pair of home runs and five RBIs from Maddie Cox, while catcher Maia Villarica hit three doubles and scored three runs.
After the contest, Mercier went over to the Barrington dugout and addressed the Eagles after the 3-hour, 20minute contest.
“I tip my hat to Barrington because there were no losers in that game,” Mercier said. “I just saw the fight in my kids’ eyes and I couldn’t take one of those kids out. They wanted to finish this.”
While she gave up 15 runs, only eight of which were earned, junior Vanessa Venkataraman pitched an impressive game. The righty threw 220 pitches and didn’t walk an Eagle, while striking out nine batters.
Mercier planned on bringing in reliever Kayla Butler late in extra innings, but Venkataraman wanted the ball.
“She didn’t look like she pitched 11 innings,” Mercier said. “She had the adrenaline going like she wanted more It almost kicked her into a higher gear and in that 10th inning, she was throwing harder. I told her after nine innings, ‘You’re done.’ She said, ‘No, I’m not.’” She wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me.”
Venkataraman, who hit a two-run home run in the fourth inning to trim her team’s deficit to just one, allowed just two earned runs after the fourth inning. Alyssa Murray led the way offensively with four hits, three runs scored and a pair of RBIs. Freshman Alex Ledger hit three doubles and drove in a run, while Liz Jalette, O’Donnell and Venkataraman each drove in two runs.
“I do like where we’re going,” Mercier said. “I told them Thursday that we haven’t played our best game yet. That was the start of it, right there. We had a big talk at practice Wednesday night about how we can’t play down to our opponents, we need to play our game. If you want to win a championship, you have to play like champions every day. I think they’re starting to understand that.”