PHOTO BY BOB ROCHE
Swampscott second baseman Katie Watts handles a toss for a force out.
By SCOT COOPER
LOWELL — Just as it had in the 2015 season, this season ended for the Swampscott softball team in the Division 2 North title game at Martin Field in Lowell. Last year it was Reading, the top seed, that took out the Blue, Sunday it was No. 1 seed Tewksbury winning the crown with a 7-0 victory.
The Redmen scored seven runs in the first three innings, putting the Blue in a hole that from which they never could crawl out. Swampscott coach Gary Moran didn’t sugarcoat how his team played Sunday afternoon.
“We knew we needed to come out and play a perfect game against these guys to win, and we didn’t play it,” Moran said. “We knew that we had to make the plays to be in this game, and we didn’t make them. Bad day for us to have a bad game.”
Swampscott put two runners on in the top of the first. Katie Watts reached on an infield hit and moved to second when Tewksbury’s Adriana Favreau walked her counterpart on the mound, Hannah Leahy.
Olivia Cooke bunted the runners up, but Favreau got Christina King on strikes to end the threat. It would be the only inning that Swampscott got two runners aboard in the game.
After going a full game without striking out in a win over Gloucester, Swampscott K’d nine times Sunday. The Big Blue managed only three hits: Watts’ single in the first, a single by King leading off the fourth, and another single, this one a leadoff single by Sydney Cresta in the fifth.
Tewksbury got the only runs they would need in the bottom of the first. Hannah Leahy, the NEC Player of the Year, issued two walks and hit a batter, and two of those runners came home on a single by Erika Whynot.
Kirsten Dick singled home Marissa Doherty for another run in the second, and things went really bad in the bottom of the third when three Tewksbury hits and three Blue errors led to the final four runs for the winners.
Leahy breezed through the fourth, fifth and sixth, but by that time Tewksbury had a big lead, and Favreau was having her way on the mound. Moran said it was unusual for his team to box the ball around so much, especially in such a big game.
“We didn’t do a very good job in the first three innings, not like our team at all, we settled down and played pretty well after the third, but by that time, the damage was pretty much done,” Moran said.
“We were able to jump out ahead early, and that was one of the keys for us,” Tewksbury coach Leo DiRocco said. “We used good hitting, good pitching and our speed on the bases to our advantage today.”
