Pine Plains benefits from layoff to win title
An eight-day hiatus could be deadly to a team heading into postseason, sapping all of its momentum.
A week’s worth of practice instead seemed to do a world of good for Pine Plains High’s softball squad.
Cleaning up some problem areas during the break, the Bombers played a much cleaner game Saturday as they defeated S.S. Seward 9-4 for their third consecutive Section 9, Class B championship.
“Normally, at this time, you don’t want to have too many days off,” Pine Plains coach Les Funk said. “We had a lot of stuff we had to work on and actually had four or five days to work on the lit-
tle things — both pitching and defense, some of our hitting. Not playing is one thing when you don’t see the pitching, but we took advantage of the days we had off.
“That was a good thing for us.”
The (13-5) Bombers, who reached the state finals last year, renew that quest Thursday when they play Section 1’s Pawling in a 5 p.m. regional semifinal game at Rhinebeck.
Alex McKenzie shut out the (9-6) Spartans on four hits over the first five innings. By the time Seward scored, Pine Plains had the game in hand.
“I thought it would be terrible,” McKenzie said about the break. “I thought this was going to set us back but, actually, the amount of work that we put in at practice and the way Funk pushed us made us improve a hundred times more than I thought it was going to. It definitely helped us. I’m actually happy that we had the bye. The outfield improved. Kris (Wilson) was killing it in the outfield.
“We have a streak going,” McKenzie said about the three-peat. “We just keep trying to push. Winning this is not easy. It just keeps getting harder, but it’s fun.”
The Bombers had 10 hits in the game, including six for extra bases. Eighth-grader Lourdes Belanger and seventh-grader Miranda Koch each had a single, double and two RBI, Wilson (a freshman) had a single, triple and one RBI, Cat Simmons doubled in two runs, Jo Schmidt doubled in one and Haley Strang tripled in another.
Pine Plains gathered eight of its hits and all of the runs with two out.
Belanger put the team ahead with a two-run double down the left field line in the first inning.
Wilson singled with two out in the second, which opened the flood gates for a four-run uprising. Strang followed with a RBI triple. After McKenzie drew a walk, Simmons doubled in both and Schmidt then smacked her double.
Pine Plains added three more runs in the fifth. Meghan Murray drew a twoout walk to put two runners aboard. Koch scored both when she punched a double to left. Wilson followed with a RBI triple to the right center gap.
A pair of leadoff singles followed by a pair of ground-outs led to Seward’s first run in the sixth. The Spartans rallied for three runs in the seventh as they got four straight hits off McKenzie. Alexa Roach’s bases-loaded single scored two and Paige Yee doubled in another.
“Getting that first pitch strike. It’s different. Even that last inning here where you can’t just throw strikes. They got to be on a spot and a location or better teams are going to take advantage of that. We did focus on that,” said Funk, who put McKenzie, Strang and Schmidt through their paces during the week of practice.
“We worked on pitching a lot. We would have to run so much if we didn’t pitch strikes” McKenzie revealed. “That definitely put us under pressure.”
“In our field, we got a big oak tree down left field,” Funk pointed out.
“We had to run to an oak tree literally across the back yard of the school,” McKenzie said. ”So now every single time I pitch a ball, they say ‘oak tree’ and it just pushes me to do better.”
“They might have had 16 or 17 sprints, but the team divided them up so it was a little team camaraderie,” Funk said. “It led into the team buying in to take some of it.”
Yee was 4-for-4 for Seward with three singles and a double. Roach had three singles and reached four times and Victoria Pannels had two hits.
The running has Pine Plains’ pitchers certainly conditioned — and motivated — and for this stretch run.
“Haley hasn’t pitched in close to a month,” Funk noted. “She did a lot of pitching. Hopefully all three of them are ready to go.”