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by Dakota Antelman

by Dakota Antelman

The softball team took its most painful loss of 2015 in its biggest game of 2015, their playoff opener.

For them, a few controversial calls by the officiating crew and one home run by Tantasqua had Hudson’s coach shaking her head and their captain tossing her glove to the ground in disappointment; all while Tantasqua celebrated. Hudson, despite holding a 2-1 lead going into the bottom of the seventh inning vs the Tantasqua Warriors, was knocked out of the playoffs thanks to a sudden two-run, walk off home run.

According to their coach Mary Beth Ryan, this was “the roughest way” for the team to end their season.

“It hurts; it stings,” she said. “I told them that they’re definitely gonna have that empty feeling for a while. Especially for our senior, Bailey, it really hurts. She’s never gonna put on a uniform again, and that’s a tough, tough thing. I don’t know that the younger kids really get that. You never really get that until it actually happens and that feeling of ‘wow, this is it; it’s really over.’”

Wednesday night’s loss on the road served as a sour conclusion to what was at times a promising season for the Hawks. As recently as the second week of May, the Hawks were fighting for a league title. They appeared ready to ride their big bats and powerhouse pitcher Michelle Perry deep into the playoffs.

But seven straight losses to end the season knocked the Hawks off their perch. Thus, they ended up in Fisksdale, playing the Warriors for the right to travel to Algonquin this Saturday.

The team was hopeful no less. Nearly an hour away from one another, Hudson and Tantasqua do not play each other in the regular season. Coach Ryan, who has seen starting pitcher Perry get into trouble in recent outings vs Westboro, Marlboro and Nashoba, valued how little the Warriors knew about her team.

“They don’t know our pitchers. They don’t know our pick off play,” Ryan explained. “It’s nice to have that fresh outlook and to have them not know much about us.”

Warriors coach Phil Desroches echoed the sentiment from the Tantasqua perspective. “It is tough to game plan for them,” he said before the game. “We don’t know them. We actually only have two common opponents, so it is hard even to call around and get a sense of who they are.”

The two teams spent most of the game sizing each other up. Perry retired nine of the first ten Tantasqua batters she faced. She forced opposing batters to hit ground balls around the Hawk infield and limited the big plays that had hurt Hudson during their recent losing streak.

“She pitched a great game,” Ryan said of Perry. “She was smart. She mixed it up. She kept their hitters balanced. And it wasn’t just her start that was good; she had a great game.”

In kind, it took until the fourth inning for the Hawks to notch their first hit. When they did though, others quickly followed.

While Perry held down the fort, Amanda Doucette worked a fifth inning walk out of Tantasqua pitching and eventually scored on a Keeliey Zompetti triple to left field. The sudden run for Hudson invigorated their bench and broke open a previously scoreless game.

“I thought that that would be a turning point for us, and we would start scoring runs,” Zompetti said of her RBI triple. “We were doing good it felt like.”

Ryan said that it “felt like we took control of the game” there in the fifth inning.

Things took a turn for the unexpected once the Warriors came up to bat next though. Kelsey Emrich of Tantasqua singled on a first pitch changeup from Perry to start the home half of the fifth inning. With teammate Michaela Salviuolo batting, she stole second base but seemed to lose contact with the base when second baseman Zompetti came in to apply the tag on her.

Initially the call on the field was out, but as Tantasqua’s Desroches sprinted out to argue the call, Salviuolo was suddenly pronounced “safe.”

“I saw her hand come off the base,” Zompetti asserted after the game. “I am not entirely sure whether or not she should have been out. But the fact that she was out at first and then safe made it seem like the umpire just changed the call because of what the coach [Desroches] said.”

The reversed call drew all three Hudson coaches out of their dugout and brought forth loud complaints from Hudson players and fans. Not one batter later, the Warriors benefited from the call and tied the game on a Lizzy McQuire single to right field.

Nonetheless Ryan played down the role of that play at second base as it affected the rest of the game.

“I felt in control of that game, even after they scored in the fifth inning, which was not the case during the season. It was a different feeling being in the driver’s seat going into that seventh inning. I really thought we were gonna win. I really did.”

Hudson came to bat in the sixth inning with a new fire under them. Three straight singles from Sydney Chiasson, Steph Hamilton, and Haley Gaffney set up Maddie Haufe to drive in the go ahead run on a sacrifice fly to center field. Though they still left two runners on base in the sixth inning, and ended up stranding a runner on third base in the seventh inning, the Hawks took the field in the final frame of the game in control.

They were three outs away from the quarter finals. They could not record a single out in the seventh inning. With a runner already on first base, Kelsey Emrich ended the game on a long, line drive home run to straight center field.

The Hawks threw masks to the ground and tossed their gloves in disgust as Coach Ryan walked gingerly towards the outfield where her team eventually gathered. The mood remained grim as the Hawks silently gathered their equipment from the dugout and boarded their waiting bus.

They will not play Algonquin in the quarterfinals. Their season is over. But as admittedly “empty” as Coach Ryan says this loss leaves them feeling, the Hawks are hopeful. They eye next season and the experienced team it promises with much of the same aspiration and goals as they did this one.

“We have to work harder next year,” Zompetti, who will be a senior next season, said. “That’s really it. We can do it again. We can go farther than we did this year.”