Familiar foes: Coventry beats Somers in a Class S quarterfinal softball game
The Coventry softball team won the first time the Patriots played Somers this season.
Somers took the next two, a one-run game in the regular season and an NCCC semifinal victory.
Friday, the two NCCC teams faced each other again, this time in the Class S quarterfinal. There was even precedent here: they played each other last year in the Class S quarterfinal game and Somers won.
This time, though, Coventry prevailed. The third-seeded Patriots rode a 17-strikeout game by sophomore Elizabeth Mitchell to a 6-1 win and will face No. 15 seed North Branford, a 9-2 winner over Shepaug Friday, in a semifinal game either Monday or Tuesday, at a time and place to be announced.
Mitchell’s first home run of the season, a two-run shot over the left field fence, broke a 1-1 tie in the third inning.
“We played them away the last two times,” Mitchell said. “The first time we played them was here; we beat them 8-0. I think it was just the energy from our fans and our field.”
Mitchell had two hits and two RBI for Coventry (20-4).
Coventry had struggled to hit Somers pitcher Madison Hinkley in the past few games. So the Patriots worked on that in practice Thursday.
“She’s so good,” Coventry coach Jeff LaHouse said. “We worked on trying to adjust to her pitch, to get the bat on it. Last time we played them, she threw a no-hitter against us. She has something - she throws and it looks right there and you swing at it and it goes above your bat every time.
“So what we decided to do was visually drop the strike zone. We worked on it yesterday: something that looks like a strike, is not a strike. We’re looking for low strikes only. We laid off those pitches that came up, they were balls, then when they came down in the zone we worked on, we were able to get the contact on it. We adjusted.”
Sixth-seeded Somers (19-6) scored first when leadoff batter Kiana Kalman doubled and scored on a single by Mackenzie Mike in the first inning.
But after that, the Spartans, the Class S runners-up last year, struggled to get on base. Coventry scored three runs in the third inning, one on an error, and had three more in the sixth after Mitchell singled and three batters reached base on errors.
“It just didn’t go our way today,” Somers coach Melanie Zamorski said. “We had a couple mistakes in the field. It happens. We had three kids playing with us that had varsity experience prior to this year, we’re still building and learning. We’ve had a strong run. Some of our youngness showed today and that’s OK. I’m proud of what we did this year.
“Hinkley’s been outstanding all season long. She was good today; she wasn’t her best today. We hung one ball in the zone we didn’t mean to that went over the fence; that happens sometimes. Mitchell was on point. We didn’t hit her as well as we hoped today.”
Zamorski said it was hard to play the same team four teams, especially one from their conference.
“I hope they go out and have a good run to the championship,” she said.
Lori Riley can be reached at lriley@courant.com.
