PHOTO BY PAULA MULLER
Wyoma’s Abby Fila had a solid day on the mound and at the plate to help lead Wyoma over Woburn on Monday.
BY STEVE KRAUSE
LYNN — It’s onto the state tournament for the Wyoma junior Little League softball team.
The 13-year-old girls earned the trip, which this year will take them to Gonsalves Field in Woburn, by defeating Woburn Monday evening at Lynn Woods Field, 18-8, in six innings.
The win gives Wyoma a 2-1 victory in the best-of-three series. The girls will play the winner of the Western Mass. regional, and the series is slated to start this weekend. It, too, will be a best-of-three.
“We’ve played this team five times, and have watched them too, and every game we play with them is competitive. Those girls over there never quit,” said Wyoma manager Chad Wilkins.
Monday’s game started out that way. Wyoma got two runs in the first inning and in the bottom of the first, Woburn got one back. Then, Wyoma put another run on the board in the second on a groundout by Julia NIckolau that scored MacKenzie Shea, who had singled.
After Woburn tied it up in the bottom of the second, Wyoma came back with three in the top of the third on runs scored by Kiara Edmonds, Jenna Tobin and Abby Fila.
Naturally, Woburn answered with two runs in the bottom of the third and it was 6-5 after three.
“That’s the way it’s been for these three games,” Wilkins said. “We score, and they come back to score. They’re always right there.”
However, Wyoma’s half of the fourth inning proved to be Woburn’s undoing. Thirteen batters came up to bat and 10 of them scored.
“Yeah,” said Wilkins, “they had a tough inning. But to that point, that’s how this series was going. We score, they score.”
The inning started innocently enough, with a fly ball to center field. Then, Emma Fringuelli belted one clear over the right fielder’s head and flew around the bases for an inside-the-park home run. It all unraveled for Woburn after that, as Wyoma pounded three pitchers and took advantage of several Woburn fielding miscues to build a 16-6 lead. Edmonds had two runs batted in during the onslaught, with Tobin, Fila, Amanda Wilkins and Katie O’Neill one each.
Woburn wasn’t done, though. In the bottom of the fifth it scored two runs to make the score 16-8. However, Wyoma kept up the pressure in the top of the sixth, scoring two more runs and restoring the team’s 10-run lead. And Fila retired the side without incident in the bottom of the sixth, that was all she wrote.
“It was an excellently played game, and excellently played series,” Wilkins said. “They were all fantastic games. Everybody played tonight, so this was a full team effort.”
