One the first day of softball practice, St. Mary’s coach Colleen Newbury decided to ask her players to report at the oddest of hours.Midnight.And while that may be a tradition in college basketball, it’s certainly not de rigueur for high school softball.But Newbury had a method to her madness.”I told them that I wanted them to be the first team to begin ? and the last team to finish,” she said. “I told them how many minutes there were from midnight that day until the state final, and that they needed to be ready to play on that day.”That day is Saturday (TBA), at Worcester State, against Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School ? or, as it is known, Monty Tech.One might wonder what the parents thought of bringing their daughters to the batting cages at midnight.”They did it,” Newbury said. “They hit all night, got a little sleep, and then went to school that day. It was a very interesting day.”It’s been an interesting season, too. The Spartans started out like a house on fire, winning their first seven. Then, they ran into a little trouble, winning only five more games the rest of the way while dropping eight, finishing with a 12-8 record and earning a 15 seed in the Division 3 North sectional.If there was ever a team in need of a fresh start, it was St. Mary’s. And Newbury was right there with the new motto.”I told them we won our first seven games ? and now we wanted to win our final seven,” she said.So far, they’ve won six ? five in the sectional and one Tuesday night, a rousing 4-3 nine-inning comeback win in the state semifinal over Cohasset, the top seed in the South. And in some ways, the win was sort of a microcosm for the season. St. Mary’s got off to a fast start and took a 2-0 lead. Then, the Spartans had one bad inning, and Cohasset forged ahead, 3-2.However, the Spartans recovered, held the Skippers at bay, and came up with a wild way to even the score ? bunting four times in the top of the seventh inning (sandwiched around a semi-intentional walk to catcher Erin McAndrews).In the middle of it all was junior centerfielder Maria Nazzaro, who, herself, had a bit of a dip midway through the season.”She got a little down, and you could see it,” said Newbury. “She was losing confidence in herself, and it showed.”But Nazzaro also worked diligently on – as they would say in golf – her short game – an aspect of offense that Newbury knows only too well.”She’s been working hard on reading the infield, and figuring out when to bunt and when to slap,” Newbury said. “And that’s something I can teach her a lot about, because that’s what I did when I played (she was the leadoff hitter for three of her four seasons with Bishop Fenwick).”Now, when she bunts, she’s on base, and she’s a very good, very confident baserunner ? maybe the best we have,” Newbury said.It’s no coincidence that Nazzaro was the runner on third when Ariel LaRosa put down a textbook suicide squeeze that brought the tying run across, Newbury said.There are other aspects. Up and down the lineup, the Spartan hitters make contact. There are few strikeouts.”And that’s huge,” said Newbury. “We had some long at-bats (Wednesday).”Also, outside of that one bad inning, the defense played well – especially when it came to executing fundamentals. With one out in the ninth, Cohasset’s Carly Salerno knocked one over Nazzaro’s head in center. Nazzaro almost caught up to it, but it glanced off her glove.However, right fielder Brittany Hanscom – who knocked in the game-winning run in the top of the inning – ran it down and fired a perfect relay to second baseman Kristina Burri ? who rifled a throw to third in plenty of time to tag Salerno as she tried to stretch the hit into a triple.”The biggest thing is that Brittany hit the cut,” said Newbury. “She doesn’t hit the cut, and the runner’s on third.”There were a thousand and one other things that didn’t make the box score that factored hugely in that win. Sam Kiley, pitching in relief, caught two bullets hit right back