AMHERST — Walking to the plate in the bottom of the sixth inning, Taylor Murphy had but one thought reverberating through her mind. As she put the ball in play, that thought echoed louder and louder. The eighth-grader put her head down, raced the 60 feet from home to first base as fast as she could, turned and saw the ball was nowhere to be found.
“I just knew I had to get on base,” recalled Murphy of the play that saved Turners Falls High School’s season. “That was literally the only thing on my mind.”
Murphy’s grounder to second base with two outs in the bottom of the sixth skipped up at the last second and wasn’t handled cleanly by Hopedale High School second baseman Lucia Rolo. The miscue enabled pinch runner Katie Garcia to score from third base with the tying run, and the Powertown scored the go-ahead run one batter later when Maddy Johnson also reached on an error to second base. The bizarre final offensive inning for Turners salvaged what was looking more and more like a disappointing end to the season, and the squad lived to fight another day thanks to a 2-1 victory over central Mass. champion Hopedale in the MIAA Division III state semifinals Tuesday afternoon at Sortino Field on the campus of UMass.
Turners (22-2) advanced to Saturday’s MIAA Div. III title game against Austin Preparatory School (23-2) in a rematch of last year’s state championship that was won by the Powertown, 2-0. That game will be played at Worcester State University at a time still to be determined.
Veteran coach Gary Mullins said his team’s semifinal win over Hopedale was one of the more bizarre postseason games he’s been a part of at Turners. The Powertown managed just two hits, singles by Jordyn Fiske and Hailey Bogusz, and scored both runs in the sixth without the benefit of a hit.
“Unfortunately for (Hopedale), they played well enough and they should’ve been the winner,” said Mullins afterward. “That’s the game of softball; it can be very cruel. And unfortunately for them, it was very cruel.”
It was an afternoon of sweat and angst for Turners, which was held hitless in the heat until Fiske’s fourth-inning single. By that point, the western Mass. champs were in a 1-0 hole, as Hopedale (16-9) came through with two hits in the top of the first and scored on a sacrifice fly from Jordan Wilson to take the early lead.
That run held up until the sixth. First baseman Aly Murphy reached on a fielder’s choice, and pinch runner Garcia moved up to second on a wild pitch. She eventually made it to third on a Fiske groundout, setting the stage for Taylor Murphy’s at-bat with two outs.
“I think we had been feeling down until that point so, with a (runner on third), I had to hit the ball or get on somehow,” Murphy said.
After she successfully crossed first base due to the error that tied the game, Murphy immediately stole second to get into scoring position. She took third on another wild pitch from Hopedale starter Julia Alberto, and Johnson followed with another grounder to the right side. This one again ate up Rolo, and Johnson was able to reach on the play that allowed Murphy to cross with the go-ahead run and a 2-1 lead. Just like that, Turners was on top and in control.
“With two outs in that situation, all I was thinking was to make contact and put the ball in play,” Johnson offered. “I was really hustling down the line. I just kept thinking, ‘I have to get there, I have to get there.’”
With new life after nearly six full innings of difficulty, Turners was alive heading back out to the field for the top of the seventh.
“I think there was an instant change,” Taylor Murphy said of her team’s mood after the two runs. “We weren’t playing Turners softball. We’re a very good team and needed to show it because we hadn’t been. We went from a lull to a very big high.”
Turners starter Peyton Emery didn’t give the Blue Raiders any glimmer of hope in the top of the seventh. The junior shut the door, getting a line-out to center field for the first out then striking out back-to-back hitters to secure the unlikely win and catapult her team into the state finals for the fourth consecutive year.
“I just wanted to go back out there and shut them down,” said Emery of the seventh inning. “Everyone’s energy went back up after we took the lead and I wanted to keep it there.”
Emery struck out seven and didn’t walk a batter in the complete-game effort. She worked out of jams in the fourth and fifth innings, as Hopedale stranded runners at second and third in the fourth as well as a runner at second in the fifth.
“I thought she threw pretty well,” said Mullins of his pitcher. “We made a few plays behind her. I don’t think she threw a bad game at all. She has enough wiggle to get out of things most of the time.”
After two straight huge offensive outputs in wins over Greenfield High School and Mt. Everett Regional School, Turners was unable to break through against Alberto. The Hopedale senior pitcher struck out just one batter and walked three, but the timing never quite synched up for the normally-potent Powertown bats.
“Oftentimes after you have a couple of games where you hit the ball really well, you can come up empty and that’s what happened to us,” Mullins explained. “You’ve got to give (Alberto) credit. She threw a two-hitter. Maybe there was a little wrinkle there, we weren’t making solid contact. I don’t know, to be honest with you.
“There wasn’t a lot of energy in the dugout today,” he continued. “I think we spent a lot more time worrying about being hot than we did about playing softball. I kept thinking we’re going to get something going, get that three or four run inning together and we’ll beat them, but that really never came. How (the win) happened is amazing.”
Regardless, the pursuit of a third consecutive state title somehow remained alive. Mullins hopes his team’s performance on Saturday will more closely mirror the rest of the season, and not Tuesday’s state semifinal.
“They’re kids. We proved how fragile we can be at times, too,” the veteran coach explained. “I think they have an expectation of themselves to play and to perform, and they didn’t today. And that’s OK with me. We got beat by Wachusett this year, 3-1, and our kids played a heck of a softball game. We got beat by a good team that day. That’s OK with me, too.
“We realized how fortunate we were to escape today,” Mullins continued. “Hopefully we come a little more on-task on Saturday.”
Austin Prep, the North champion, defeated South champion West Bridgewater High School, 8-2, on Tuesday in the other semifinal played in Taunton.