Krause: Momentum went against Spartans in state final

WORCESTER – A deluge begins with a single drop. And if enough drops fall, the result can be devastating.That best describes St. Mary’s loss to Assabet Valley Saturday. The Aztecs won, 5-2, to capture the Division 3 state championship, but once the softball started rolling down the hill, so to speak, it picked up steam and destroyed everything in the Spartans’ path.It was that kind of a day.You knew it was going to be that kind of a day right away, when Victoria Viger walked in the first inning and then had to stand there as Assabet’s second baseman dropped Kaleigh Finigan’s popup.Fortune smiling on St. Mary’s? Forget it. All it ended up as was an out, as Viger was easily forced at second.It was bad enough that happened once, but we got an encore in the second when Brooke L’Abbe singled and her courtesy runner (Alexis Mango) found herself in the same predicament as Tatiana Doucette’s pop fly was dropped. Once again, a break under any other circumstance turned into an out.It looked as if the scales of justice would balance when Alexandria Fisher got a base hit and came home when Viger’s bunt was thrown away. But it was just a cruel tease, because the roof that was leaking through the first two innings fell in an inning later. It started innocently enough when Aztec Jocelyn Orangio reached on an infield hit (Viger made a nice play to get to the slow roller, but then slipped making the throw ? a portent?). What followed was bizarre on top of bizarre. A bad throw on a sacrifice put two runners on. A single produced a run on which an infielder cut off Alison Butler’s throw from left. Ninety-nine-point nine percent of the time, that’s a smart baseball play. It’s still early in the game, and your objective is to stay out of the big inning. And one way you do that is to keep runners from getting into scoring position.However, Butler let loose a beauty, and there may have been a play at the plate.Coach Colleen Newbury did not second-guess the play because, she said, it was difficult to hear anybody with the crowd (and it was a good one) on top of the action.Still, L’Abbe almost pitched out of it. She got some help from the infield on two successive bases-loaded forces at home. But as anyone who has ever seen his basement flooded can tell you, there’s only so much you can do. Sooner or later, the water wins. And at this point, the water began to win.After the two forces, one run was forced home on a walk (the strike zone was unusually high – albeit for both pitchers – all afternoon and even Newbury admits that she’d prefer her pitchers to keep the ball down).L’Abbe still looked to be out of it with minimal damage, but a two-run error pretty much sealed the deal.A 5-1 score is not insurmountable. You don’t call off the dogs and put out the fire if you’re behind by four runs in the third inning. But this one just seemed to have an “it’s over” feeling to it. St. Mary’s was having a difficult time with Assabet Valley’s Madison Parmeter and couldn’t get anything going. And any time the Spartans came close, there was someone from Assabet Valley making a nice play.In a way, this game was eerily similar to the Super Bowl game St. Mary’s played against Abington in December ? if not in actual play-by-play, in actual reality. After St. Mary’s let a golden opportunity slip from its grasp during the second half of that game, you could sense all the air escaping and the balloon flailing wildly.The good news? The Spartans aren’t going to be hurting for pitching in the near future. The combo of 10th grader Jordan D’Orsi and eighth grader Mia Nowicki was lights out all during the postseason. It’ll be interesting to see what Newbury does with those two in the coming years, but one thing’s for sure: it’s a happy problem to have.Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].