’Bolts lose season-ending heartbreaker to Northmen

Jacob Marrocco
Posted 6/18/15

The Cranston High School East softball team was eliminated from the Division II playoffs by North Smithfield last Wednesday, 10-9, at the Brayton Avenue Softball Complex despite two furious …

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’Bolts lose season-ending heartbreaker to Northmen

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The Cranston High School East softball team was eliminated from the Division II playoffs by North Smithfield last Wednesday, 10-9, at the Brayton Avenue Softball Complex despite two furious late-inning rallies.

The ’Bolts battled back from a 7-2 deficit to tie the game in the final frame, and then fell just short in trying to bring the score level when they went down 10-7 in the eighth inning. Sophomore third baseman McKenzie Richards and shortstop Alexa St. Angelo led the way for East, as each registered two RBIs in the seventh inning alone.

“[I told them] that they gave 110 percent,” East manager P.J. Bessette said about the lengthy meeting with his team after the game. “For some reason it just didn’t work for us tonight. They gave it all on the field today and, you know, we just fell short. I started off [talking to them], I didn’t know what to say. I just didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to explain it…It is bitter, it’s very bitter. Especially for the seniors when we’re this close to getting to our goal.”

East’s offense had not shown much life heading into the last inning. It had left 11 runners on base in the first six innings, including when Richards flew out to left field with the bases loaded in the second. It looked to flip the script in the seventh when catcher Brittany Rice and left fielder Taylor Sukys led off with back-to-back singles.

After right fielder Michele Tallo struck out swinging, the No. 9 hitter, centerfielder Kia Antoine, drew a walk to load the bases and send it to the top of the order. With second baseman Amanda Rosa at the plate, Northmen pitcher Kathleen McMullin fired a wild pitch that kicked to the backstop and brought Rice home while sending Sukys and Antoine into scoring position.

“I told them, ‘One batter, one pitch at a time,’” Bessette said. “That’s all we needed. We go from there, and we just move on. One at a time, we can’t hit that four-run home run. We need to get one at a time, one at a time.”

Richards stepped in looking for revenge after Rosa popped out to put the ’Bolts’ backs against the wall. The young third baseman responded by launching a two-RBI double deep into the right-centerfield gap to plate Sukys and Antoine to cut the deficit to 7-5.

Brayton was going wild, but it was about to explode. After having gone 0-for-4 on the day, senior shortstop St. Angelo stepped in as the tying run.

“Once Alexa came up, I told her ‘You just keep doing what you’ve been doing for four years and everything will be fine,’” Bessette said.

The captain responded. St. Angelo crushed a two-run home run over the left field fence to send her team into a frenzy and bring the score level at 7.

East senior captain and pitcher Paula Frost stepped back on the mound for the eighth inning, but had trouble holding the tie. After shortstop and designated runner Melissa Cianci was placed at second base to start the inning, Frost yielded the go-ahead RBI double to third baseman Julia Cloutier.

Bessette said that Frost, who ended up pitching her second complete game for the ’Bolts in three days, was not feeling 100 percent.

“Paula wasn’t feeling well today, but like I said [last Monday against West Warwick], she’s a warrior,” Bessette said. “She came through with a gutsy performance today.”

Frost would work out of the jam without any further damage with some more help from St. Angelo. With one out after centerfielder Nicole Turcotte went down swinging and Cloutier at third after a wild pitch, first baseman Emily Larson looked for her fifth hit of the day. Larson hit a hard ground ball into the hole toward St. Angelo, who instead chose to fire home where Rice tagged out the lead runner.

Left fielder Lorenza O’Donnell stepped in with Larson on first and drove Frost’s pitch deep into the left-centerfield gap, where Sukys and Antoine collided after neither had called the ball. As they both had trouble getting up, Larson and O’Donnell both came around to score, putting the Northmen up 10-7. Antoine was okay, but Sukys had to be helped off the field by Bessette and North Smithfield manager Paul Mercier with what appeared to be a lower-body injury. She would remain seated in the dugout until after the game when she was taken to an ambulance.

The ’Bolts weren’t ready to end their season yet. Larson had trouble fielding a throw to lead off the inning, which allowed first baseman Latarra Harris to reach and designated runner Rosa to come home from second base. Rice continued her late-inning heroics with an RBI double to plate Harris and cut the deficit to 1 with no outs.

“I told them I was proud of these girls,” Bessette said. “I was proud of the way they performed and I have no regrets. It was my joy to watch them become a team, because I told them when we started off the season I didn’t know what type of team we were going to have, but they gelled as a team. It wasn’t an individual effort, it was a team effort this year.”

Pinch hitter Amber Pinheiro laid down a sacrifice bunt to move Rice to third base, but McMullin forced a huge strikeout on Tallo for the second out. Antoine was the last hope for the ’Bolts, and she hit a hard groundball into the gap that was initially misplayed by Cianci. She fired on to first and was called out on a very close play to end the game.

“It was tough to lose that game like that,” Bessette said. “I give North Smithfield a lot of credit. Coach Mercier’s a great guy. He’s a very great coach, he’s got that team coached up to their ability, and, you know, they get all the flare hits and all the hits that they needed, and we just couldn’t get that one or two hits at the end of the game.”

The Northmen jumped out to their 7-2 lead with five runs between the fifth and sixth innings. Leading by a slim 2-1 margin in the top of the fifth, North Smithfield quickly put two runners in scoring position with no one out after a Turcotte double and infield single from Larson. With one out, catcher Kaitlyn Hewitt hit an RBI single into left field to give the Northmen some insurance, 3-1. McMullin’s fielder’s choice brought home Larson to make it 4-1.

The wheels fell off a bit for East in the sixth after the Northmen ballooned their lead to five with help from three straight runs scored. Cianci and Cloutier recorded back-to-back one-out singles, and Turcotte stepped in 2-for-3 on the day. Turcotte hit a soft fly ball to left-centerfield, where Antoine misplayed it going to the ground. Cianci score on the play, and Turcotte and Cloutier reached first and second, respectively. They both later scored on a two-RBI single from Larson.

Larson went 4-for-5 with three RBIs for the Northmen and reached base in all five of her plate appearances.

The loss brought to an end a successful playoff run for East. It beat Middletown easily, 5-0, in the first round before falling to top-seeded Moses Brown, 4-3, to drop to the losers’ bracket. It defeated West Warwick, which was 14-2 on the season and earlier defeated the ’Bolts 9-5, by a score of 6-3 to advance to their tilt with the Northmen.

East will lose just four of its 15 players (including Frost and St. Angelo), but Bessette said there is an incoming freshmen class who can add to the program. Among those returning will be Richards, who emerged as a major force in just her sophomore year, and junior catcher Rice.

“I’ve got a lot of freshmen, juniors, some sophomores,” Bessette said. “I’m going to have some senior leadership with Brittany Rice and Kia and Latarra, [First and third baseman] Noelle Bisignano. They’re all going to be senior leaders next year and we’ll see what type of freshmen class we have coming in. I know there’s a few freshmen coming in, so it bodes well for this program going forward.”

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