NEXT STOP: THE FINALS
Mounties win 9-inning thriller; Northmen cruise
D’Abrosca sisters set stage for Williams’ walk-off double
PROVIDENCE — The No. 2 Mount St. Charles softball team entered the bottom of the ninth inning of Saturday’s Division II losers’ bracket final trailing No. 6 Johnston by a run.
But there was very little doubt which team was going to win the game.
The Panthers had no answers all afternoon for sisters Emily and Kaitlyn D’Abrosca, and the duo started the ninth inning with back-toback bunt singles against Madison Plouffe. While it seemed like a perfect time to bunt the game-winning run into scoring position, sophomore designated player Talia Williams decided to end the game herself.
The lefty belted the first pitch she saw to center. Johnston’s Sam Febus didn’t read the flight of the ball and it flew past the Panther, allowing the fleet-footed D’Abrosca sisters to race home and lead the Mounties to a 10-9 come-from-behind victory at Rhode Island College.
“The team was just so positive and we found a way to come back. It was amazing,” Williams said after going 2-for-6 with three RBIs. “When Kaitlin and Emily got on, I just knew I needed to make contact and see what happens. I felt great going up and it felt amazing when I hit the first pitch. I cried with happiness because it felt great to help the team out.”
“When I got to the plate, I wasn’t thinking about winning the game, I just wanted to get on base,” Emily D’Abrosca said following a 4-for5 performance. “I just wanted to start it off and get the positive energy going. As soon I got on and Kaitlyn did, I knew we had it. This feels really, really good.”
Mount St. Charles (17-4) will have a couple of days to decompress from the 150-minute contest because they won’t play No. 4 Barrington in the Division II final until Tuesday night at 5 p.m. at Rhode Island College.
Unlike the Mounties’ defeat to the Eagles Friday where they had just four hits against Paige Concannon, Mount pounded out 20 hits against Plouffe. Kaitlyn D’Abrosca led the way with six infield hits and two runs scored. Shea Kelliher had two hits and scored two runs.
The unsung hero of the afternoon was freshman Victoria Young. Not only did she have two hits, score two runs and drive in a run, but the righty also pitched five innings of relief where she allowed just two runs on four hits to earn the victory.
“I told her to keep the ball around the strike zone because they were going to be falling all over themselves to hit it because the difference in speed is substantial,” Mount coach Cliff Matthews said. “This is what happens to good hitters. It was happening to some of our good hitters in the middle of the game.”
Johnston (16-7) received another superb effort from talented junior leadoff hitter Jordan Moretti, who went 3-for-5 with three runs scored. Lauren Civetti added two hits, an RBI and a two runs scored.
The Panthers did something in the opening inning – score a run – that they couldn’t do in five innings of a mercy-rule loss in last week’s winners’ bracket semifinal contest. Civetti doubled in Moretti, but the D’Abrosca sisters both scored runs in the first to give Mount the lead.
Taylor Newcomb struggled to find the strike zone in the third and fourth innings and the Panthers took advantage by scoring six times to take a 7-2 lead. Katarina St. Angelo hit a two-run single, while Moretti and courtesy runner Megan Philbrick scored a run in each inning.
“What we kept on saying on the bench was that we scored all of our runs in one inning last time against them,” D’Abrosca said of a ninerun fourth inning in last week’s 10-0 win. “We knew that we needed to score a lot, but we knew it had to be one batter at a time. We just needed to keep the base hits coming.”
After plating one run in the fourth inning, the Mounties tied the game with four runs in the fifth inning. Newcomb (hit by pitch), Kelliher (fielder’s choice), Emily Cournoyer (RBI single) and Young (walk) all scored in the inning.
Civetti scored on a Gianna Vizzacco single in the sixth to put the Panthers ahead, but Sky O’Connell’s sacrifice fly with one out in the seventh scored Young and sent Mount to extra innings for the first time all season.
The Panthers grabbed a run against Young in the top of the ninth, but that wasn’t nearly enough with the D’Abrosca sisters looming in the last of the inning. Emily D’Abrosca started the inning with a bunt and Kaitlyn D’Abrosca followed with a bunt in front of Plouffe. Williams sent the Mounties to their first final of any kind since playing in the 2011 state final with her double to center.
“It felt amazing,” said Williams, a Woonsocket resident. “I just wanted to help my team out. The energy was so good on the bench and we just wanted to end it right there. We wanted to move on.”