Rondout, Pine Plains take different title paths
Rondout Valley High and Pine Plains take different paths en route to winning Section 9 softball titles.
Being the seventh seed in the Section 9, Class B tournament was just a number to Rondout Valley High’s softball team.
The Ganders, who had reached — and lost to Marlboro in — the finals last year, won four games in four days to capture their first championship in 13 years.
Rondout beat Highland in a play-in game Wednesday then turned around and knocked off No. 2 Marlboro the same day. In the semifinals, the Ganders dispatched No. 6 Rhinebeck. On Saturday, they took out top-seeded Chester Academy 6-0 for the title as Tori Decker shut them out on six hits.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Rondout coach Rob Fischer said. “We’ve never
been here. This is as far as I’ve ever been and I’ve had an older daughter who has gone through the program who’s never been involved.
“We’re just going to be happy to go to the next step. We’re excited.”
“It means a lot,” Decker said. “Last year we got here and we lost a tough one (31) to Marlboro, but this year we came out on top. We’re ready for the next game.”
Rondout, which last won a title in 2005 when it was in Class A, now competes in the first round of the state tournament. The (135) Ganders head to North Rockland High on Thursday to play Section 1 champion Westlake in a regional semifinal.
Decker struck out five and walked none in her complete-game performance. Her drop ball frustrated the (15-6) Hambletonians, who were ranked 13th in the state. They could not get under the ball and hammered it into the ground. Ten of the final 13 outs were on ground balls, including five comebackers to Decker.
“I saw the way they were swinging at the ball, anything left up they would have crushed it,” said Fischer, who had Decker throwing plenty of drops.
“I’m a ground ball pitcher and I love fielding my position,” Decker said. “It’s how it goes a lot of the times.”
“She did her job. One good hit that I think that I saw go out into the outfield,”
Fischer said. “It was a shot and it was in the later innings. She might have slipped on a pitch, but she did a phenomenal job.”
Chester’s Karly Palmer used a pair of strikeouts to get out of second-and-third, one-out jam in the second, but Rondout came right back to scored twice in the third.
Mackenzie Fischer drew a walk and Bianca Novotny singled to start the inning. Palmer appeared to be getting out of it when she got Decker to fly out and Jessica Meyer to pop up. Lauren Parete then laced a twoout single to center.
Fischer was being signaled to stop at third, but the throw home scooted by the catcher and Fischer scored. Novotny soon after scored on a passed ball.
“It was crucial,” Decker noted about getting the early lead. “Our number one motto is ‘Score first. score last” and we’ll win some games.”
Rondout broke the game open with a four-run rally in the top of the sixth. Fischer opened the door with a twoout walk. Novotny doubled her home and she scored on Decker’s third single of the day. Meyer followed with a run-scoring double and Parete got her second RBI on a triple to right center.
Decker held Chester at bay, extricating herself from three jams.
The Hambletonians had runners on the corners with two out in the first inning, but Decker struck out Palmer looking to end that bid. Chester had runners on first and second with one away in the fourth,
but a pair of ground outs squelched that uprising.
It threatened again in the sixth when Katie Koelling doubled with one out and went to third on a wild pitch. Decker coaxed a comebacker and looked the runner back to get the second out, then forced another grounder to her to end the inning.
Koelling had three of Chester’s six hits with the double plus two singles.
“I don’t know if was a factor,” Rob Fischer said about the path the team had to take being a No. 7
seed. “With softball it can go any way. The girls had to show up and do their job and today they did. No errors in our field. It was phenomenal.
“I’m very happy for them. They talked about this all year. They just wanted one win — win sectionals. Anything after this is a bonus.
“They worked hard all year,” he added. “We didn’t know what we had, because we have such a young team. I only have one senior and it’s our best pitcher.”