You know a game is special when the reverberations from the contest are still being felt and talked about days after the final out was recorded.
That, in a nutshell, is why this year’s CIAC Class L semifinal between top-seeded Brookfield and No. 4 Jonathan Law, at Eastern Connecticut State University, is being named as the 2026 CT Softball Blog’s Diamond Award Game of the Year.
It was a good, tight game; everything you wanted out of a semifinal between two good teams.
After seven innings, Brookfield and Law were tied at 1-1.
Same for after eight innings. And nine.
In fact, after the 11th inning had come and gone the Bobcats and Lawmen were still knotted at 1-1.
That’s when things got crazy and epic.
After Law scored two runs in the top of the 12th inning, Brookfield matched it.
The Lawmen added two more runs in the 13th inning. Again, the Bobcats answered with two runs of their own.
In the 14th inning, Law took a 6-5 lead, but Brookfield found an answer, sending the game to the 15th inning.
Addy Coutts and Haylie Miller opened the bottom of the 15th with back-to-back singles. Emily Casey, the lone freshman in the Brookfield starting line-up, sacrificed both players up a base.
Enter sophomore shortstop Olivia Sinapi. First-pitching swinging, Sinapi ended the marathon with a base hit to left, giving the Bobcats a 7-6 win and a berth in the Class L championship game.
“That is the craziest game of softball I have ever watched at any level in high school, college, on TV, anything,” Brookfield coach Alyssa Lionetti said. “All the props to Jonathan Law, but I am really proud of our comeback three times and coming back to win it in the end. It shows the heart and the absolute love for the game by this team. They play for each other, 15 innings. Our seniors stepped up really big. I couldn’t be any prouder.”
Sinapi simply said she couldn’t have done it without the support of her teammates.
“That was pretty crazy, we fought hard,” Sinapi said. “We stayed up, we supported each other and we picked each other up when we were down. We never stop fighting.”
Here’s what might have been the most impressive part of about the game—which ran one inning longer than a doubleheader.
The pitchers—Brookfield’s Syndey Miller and Law’s Maddy Bonanno—combined to throw 435 pitches in the game.
Miller fired 235 while Sinapi’s walk-off single to end it came on Bonanno’s 200th delivery.
“Syd is an absolute competitor,” Lionetti said. “Any pitcher in the state who can go from losing back to (being) tied to losing, she is just a fierce kid. I have never seen somebody who wants to win more than she does. I think that is where it comes from. She knows this is her season on the line and she is going to do anything.”
The two catchers—Law’s Chloe Capalbo and Samantha Aurricho for Brookfield—also went the distance. Both had key hits and battled behind the plate for 15 grueling innings.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Aurricho said. “It is not a solo win; it is an entire team win. We’ve had each other’s backs all season and we are going to have each other’s backs in the championship game.”
Four days later, Brookfield would win the state championship by a 3-1 score over New Milford.
While the Bobcats will never forget that moment, nobody in the state will forget the 15-inning game they played in the semifinals to get there.
(Editor’s Note—Up next: Tomorrow morning will be posting our CT Softball Blog Diamond Awards Freshman of the Year)
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