NORTH SUTTON- Stevens softball rolled into Kearsarge Regional High School on Monday with a 12-2 record and left with another tally in the win column, beating the Cougars 14-0 on Kearsarge’s senior day as they were celebrating Taylor Albright and Rachel Breault, who are both moving on to attend UNH in the fall.
Stevens was able to pile up four runs with two outs in the top of the first inning. Jenna Pond started the rally off with an RBI triple to right and then she later stole home on a passed-ball. Tanner Brown and Elle Grenier then had back-to-back RBI-doubles to put the Cardinals up 4-0.
Pond drove another run in with two outs in the top of the second with a single that scored Alexis Ford. In the top of the third, Ashlynn Marsh had a 2-RBI single with the bases loaded to give Stevens a 7-0 advantage. They would make it 8-0 in the fourth when Grenier would pick up another RBI on a single to left, and stretch the lead to nine with an RBI from Kate Chambers in the fifth.
Stevens put the game away in the sixth by putting up five more runs and held Kearsarge to a 1,2,3 bottom-half to walk away with a 14-0 road victory in just six innings.
Madison Lapsley pitched a complete-game shutout for the Cardinals. On her pitching Monday, Stevens head coach, Missy Nichols, said, “Maddie pitched well. Our plan was to have Morgan Rhoades pitch but she couldn’t go. Hopefully that’ll help us going into the week because we can have Morgan go whenever she needs to.”
Stevens improves to 13-2 and now has playoffs in their sights. “Our goal all year is not to play to the opposing team but to just play our game,” said Coach Nichols. “We took advantage of a lot of passed-balls and we should do that in order to take advantage of those mistakes. If we don’t, then come playoff time, we’re not going to be ready to take advantage and it might be that one steal or that one passed ball that we have to get across the plate to score.”
Nichols has a young squad and to be 13-2 is quite impressive. “We are the five-seed right now and that could change. We are looking at a home playoff game right now and possibly two,” she said. “We only have one senior… so that’s promising in itself. No matter how far we go this year, we only have one senior and everybody else has a ton of varsity experience. So, we’ll go as far as we can and see what happens.”
Stevens is back in action at home on Wednesday against Newfound at 7 p.m. Kearsarge falls to 1-13 and travels to Hanover on Tuesday.
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