BROOKFIELD—Leave it to a catcher to know the strike zone.
New Milford junior catcher Lily Fortier drew a bases-loaded walk on a three-ball, two-strike full count in the top of the seventh inning, driving home the winning run in New Milford’s 6-5 victory over Brookfield in a battle of SWC unbeatens on Wednesday afternoon.
The victory kept the Green Wave unbeaten at 8-0 on the season while Brookfield slipped to 7-1.
Both teams were ranked in the state’s top 10 polls. The CT Softball Blog Players’ Poll had Brookfield ranked No. 4 while New Milford had just cracked the top 10 at, tying for No. 8. The latest GametimeCT poll had Brookfield as No. 4 and New Milford as No. 9.
“At the end of the day, it is a regular season game, and I think we all came in here knowing that,” New Milford coach Robert Farmer said. “Both teams are now representing the SWC, being in the top 10 in the state, and I think it was going to be tough for somebody today. Win or lose, it was going to be tough for someone to walk off this diamond today. And I think fortunately we came through, we contributed at the right time. We got a lot of good things to go down. Lily was disciplined at her at bat, locked in, seeing the ball really well, not to chase out of the zone, and we got that walk.”
Fortier stepped to the plate as the sixth batter of the top of the seventh inning.
Kelsey Blom had led off the inning with a walk. With one out, pinch runner Rorie Bonanno was sacrificed to second by Lia Manka, bringing Cienna McNamara to the plate.
McNamara had led off the game with a solo home run on the second pitch of the game against Brookfield ace Sidney Miller, but in her three plate appearances after that Bobcats coach Alyssa Lionetti opted to internationally walk the future North Carolina Tar Heel.
With runners on first and second and two outs, however, Regan O’Loughlin was hit by a pitch, loading the bases as Fortier walked to the plate.
“That’s why she’s stacked the way we are in our lineup, right?” Farmer said. “Because when we know other teams may intentionally walk Cienna, we got (O’Loughlin), we got Lily, we got Lydia (Rocky), we got bats that are like, ‘Hey, I got your back here,’ and I’m capable of producing and making them pay.”
After working the count to 3-2, Fortier drew the bases-loaded walk, plating a run and giving the Green Wave the lead.
“I was very confident. I knew it was coming. We’ve seen her before,” Fortier said. “Especially that being the fourth at bat in the game, we’ve seen a lot of pitches. So yeah, I was ready for it. Whatever it takes to help the team, it doesn’t really matter.”
There is a lot of season left and these two teams are quite likely to face each other again.
But it was New Milford drew first blood on McNamara’s second-pitch solo home run, a line drive that likely didn’t go higher than 15 feet yet sailed over the fence for a 1-0 Green Wave lead in the top of the first inning.
It was the 100th hit of her career—and she’s only a junior, though she has already verbally committed to take her bats and gloves to the University of North Carolina after graduating.
“We didn’t get a lot of warm-up time, so I was like, okay, I’m just going to be aggressive when I come up,” McNamara said. “I knew she was going to throw me a first pitch strike. So, I swung, foul ball. I was under it a little bit and I was like, all right. See the ball from her hand and just hit it. She’s providing all the power, so all you got to do is just get there and do everything right. So, I saw the ball come out of her hand. I just used my legs and boom, I didn’t even know it was gone. I thought it was a double and then everyone stopped and I was like, ‘Is that a home run?’”
It was in the third inning, however, that New Milford made a statement, plating four runs. And it all happened with two outs.
Miller, who definitely found her groove in the latter innings, got back-to-back K’s to open the inning before Lionetti opted to intentionally walk McNamara for the first time. She gave her three free passes, all told.
A single by O’Loughlin followed, putting runners on first and third.
A Brookfield error plated two runs and became even more painful when Lydia Rocky blasted a two-run home run to center field, giving the Green Wave a 5-0 lead.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Rocky said. “It feels really great.”
Brookfield, however, was ready to defend its home field against a league rival just nine miles up the road.
In the home half of the third, the Bobcats scored four times to get back to within a run of the Green Wave.
A lead-off single by Miller got things started. A walk to Olivia Sinapi was followed by an RBI single by Lila Conrad, getting the Bobcats on the board.
Samantha Aurrichio then stepped to the plate and blasted a home run to right center field, bringing Brookfield to within a run at 5-4.
In the bottom of the fifth, Brookfield was able to tie the game.
Sinapi led off with a walk and would later score on a New Milford error to tie the game at 5-all.
“I think that we’ve had such a strong year so far and we trust each other, we back each other up,” said Lionetti. “So being able to come back after what we thought was going to be a 1-0 deficit to then turning into a 5-0 deficit off of an error and a misplay, being able to come back there and tie it back up and have it start as a new game was definitely something that just spoke to the maturity, the composure and the trust that they have in each other and that fight that we will be carrying throughout the rest of the season.”
Come the seventh inning, however, a catcher’s eye and knowledge of the strike zone would prove to be the difference.
New Milford only managed three hits in the game off Miller (15Ks, 5 walks, 3 intentional)—McNamara and Rocky’s home runs plus a O’Loughlin’s hit.
Aurrichio had two hits for Brookfield and the three RBIs.
Rocky limited the Bobcats to five hits overall, striking out eight while walking six.
Of the six runs New Milford scored, only two were earned runs off Miller.
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