Fast start leads Swampscott softball over Marblehead

MARBLEHEAD – Even though it won’t be playing softball in June, Swampscott took the field at Marblehead Middle School on Wednesday and played like a team that was going to be a part of the postseason.Facing archrival Marblehead on senior day, Cortney Fletcher shut down the Magicians, holding them to two runs over seven innings with eight strikeouts while her teammates jumped out to a 5-0 lead early and cruised from there to a 5-2 win.”The girls always seem to get extra pumped for this game,” Swampscott coach Annamaria Addonizio said. “And I think it’s because of the rivalry they have with that team over there.”The Big Blue offense and Fletcher’s pitching were so good on Wednesday that they were able to get around four errors that resulted in only one unearned run.”We were aggressive at the plate and that’s something that I think has been missing lately,” Addonizio said.Marblehead had numerous chances against Fletcher in the early innings but couldn’t come up with a timely hit. The Magicians left two runners on in the second and third innings and then committed a pair of costly errors that helped Swampscott break the game open in the third.”We didn’t play well, and Swampscott did, and credit to them,” Marblehead coach John Gold said. “We didn’t get the hits when we needed them.”After a scoreless first, Swampscott got the scoring started in the second. Fletcher was hit by a pitch to lead things off and then stole second and was sacrificed to third by Merry Ball with two outs.Catcher Moe Bradley then hit a ball into the hole at short for an infield single that scored Fletcher for a 1-0 lead. After surrendering a single to No. 9 batter Erin McLaughlin, Sarah Hastings got Marissa Gambale on a grounder to third to prevent further damage.In the bottom of the inning, Marblehead got a one-out double from Emma Crowley and had runners at second and third with two outs before Fletcher got a strikeout to defuse the threat.The Big Blue then exploded in the third, tacking on three more runs via four hits and two Marblehead errors.A one-out single from Alex Wilson got the rally started. Hastings struck out Monica Mosho for the second out before Fletcher laced a hit to right to plate Wilson for a 2-0 lead.Fletcher went to second on a wild pitch and moved to third on Ally Stephens’ single. Stephens went to second on an outfield error. Fletcher then made it 3-0 when Ball’s grounder to second was mishandled.Bradley followed with her second RBI single of the game to score Stephens for a 4-0 lead through three.”We made a couple of mistakes there and they took advantage of them,” Gold said.In the fourth, Gambale singlehandedly gave Swampscott a 5-0 lead. The speed demon leadoff hitter slapped a single to right and promptly stole second and third before coming home on a wild pitch.Fletcher, meanwhile, was keeping Marblehead off the scoreboard. She held the Magicians to four hits in the first five innings before the hosts began to rally in the sixth.Sam Norman and Emma Crowley reached on errors that sandwiched a Katie Fallon single to load the bases with no outs. Silvie Cohen’s sacrifice fly to center got Norman home to make it 5-1. But Fletcher got the next two batters to get the Big Blue out of trouble.Marblehead added a final run with two outs in the seventh before Fletcher struck out Fallon to end things.