Arndt belts walk-off home run
BURRILLVILLE — Sophomore first baseman Rebecca Arndt personified the Burrillville softball team’s afternoon against red-hot Mount St. Charles.
In the top of the first inning of Tuesday’s Division II clash between the local rivals, the Broncos committed three errors and Arndt had one of them to allow the Mounties to score the game’s opening three runs.
Slowly, the Broncos realized they could play with the Mounties, and they started fighting back into the game. Arndt, who had a double and scored a run in the second, came up with one out in the of the seventh inning representing the game-winning run.
With freshman Alyssa Simpson perched on second base, Arndt cranked the second pitch she saw from Mount senior Taylor Newcomb over the
center-field fence for a walk-off two-run home run in a 6-5 Division II victory.
“I knew I needed to get a hit and I knew I needed to score Alyssa to tie the game,” Arndt said after going 2-for-4 with two RBIs and a pair of runs scored. “Yes, that felt good off the bat. We always come back as a team. Our first few innings always seem to be tough, but we always find a way to rally.”
“Rebecca fought back today,” Burrillville coach Bill Lacey said. “She dropped a ball over at first base early in the game and I could see her let down, but I kept reminding them that the game isn’t over and they can’t feel bad for themselves. I just told her in the seventh to relax. The last couple of games her swing has been off, so we went to the tee before the game and she drove a couple of balls today.”
Mount St. Charles (6-2 Division II) will ruefully look back on their trip up Route 102 if the Mounties don’t finish with the No. 1 seed in Division II. The Mounties, who were coming off an impressive victory over Barrington Saturday afternoon, were up by as many as four runs.
Senior centerfielder Emily D’Abrosca continued her strong start to the season since recovering from a January elbow injury by going 2for-3 with an RBI and a run scored. Shea Kelliher added a hit, an RBI and a run scored.
“We had just come from seeing Paige (Concannon) on Saturday and we had a lot of adrenaline in the first inning,” Mount coach Cliff Matthews said. “We were swinging the bats well, but (Lacey) made an adjustment with his defense and played them deeper. We were falling all over ourselves to hit the ball. Really good teams are able to make the adjustment to styles of pitching, but we did not do that for long stretches of the game.”
Burrillville (5-3 Division II) has now won four straight games and a lot of the credit has to go to senior pitcher Sam Bousquet, who came into the season as the team’s starting shortstop. A series of events led to the team’s top two pitchers no longer playing for the team, which thrust Bousquet into the circle.
Bousquet gave up 56 runs in her team’s first four games, but she’s only allowed 15 in the last four games. Tuesday, Bousquet gave up two earned runs and just two hits after the second inning.
“All year, she’s been big for us and she just throws strikes,” Lacey said of Bousquet. “I told her at the beginning of the season to just throw strikes because I’ll position the defense to help her. I had an idea of what I wanted to do and she executed it.”
It was almost too easy for the Mounties in the opening inning because D’Abrosca (double), Shea Kelliher (single) and Marissa Santoro (error) all reached base and scored in the opening inning thanks to three errors. D’Abrosca drove in Sophia Monti in the second to extend the lead to 4-0.
Freshman Morgan Cournoyer singled in Arndt in the second to get her team on the board and then she crushed a solo home run to left field in the fourth to make the score 5-3 in favor of the road side.
“I don’t want to fall into the trap where we play to the level of our competition and the kids think they can take their foot of the gas,” Matthews said. “We can’t do that.”
Newcomb stranded five Broncos over the next two innings, but she ran into trouble in the seventh when Bousquet singled and scored on a single to the fence by Simpson. After Ally Simpson moved her cousin into scoring position with a bunt, Arndt ended the game with a home run.
“I was just looking for a good ball to hit,” Arndt said. “It was a good feeling seeing my teammates waiting for me at home. This doesn’t surprise me because we’ve always been a good team. Things can’t get in our way.”
While the Broncos make the long trek to struggling Narragansett Wednesday afternoon, the Mounties will attempt to lick their wounds against one of the hottest pitchers in the division right now, Davies sophomore Tanya Cooper.