AMHERST — Lily Spencer found herself in an atypical situation. The Frontier Regional junior was embroiled in a battle at the plate with Hoosac Valley pitcher Madi Puppolo, working the count full in a key spot early in the Western Massachusetts Division 2 semifinal, Friday.
“The count was running deep and that’s unusual for me,” Spencer said. “I usually go up there swinging right away.”
Spencer may not be used to seeing 3-2 pitches, but she’ll likely welcome the situation going forward. With her team trailing 3-0 in the top of the third inning and in need of a spark, Spencer drilled a three-run home run over the fence in left field. The long ball jumpstarted an offensive barrage for the seventh-seeded Red Hawks, who pounded out 18 hits and batted around in both the third and fourth innings to rally for a 16-11 victory over the third-seeded Hurricanes at UMass’ Sortino Field.
Frontier (16-7) will play top-seeded Hampshire Regional (17-5), a 5-0 winner over Wahconah in Friday’s other semifinal, in the championship game at 4 p.m. Saturday back at UMass.
“Leading off with Lily Spencer … she’s just so confident,” Frontier coach Gary Deane said. “She makes the game look so easy. She just goes out and has fun. Two strikes, doesn’t bother her. She hits for power, she hits singles, she can do it all offensively. She’s probably hitting .600 in the last couple of weeks. That three-run home run started us off and totally got us going. Our dugout exploded with joy and excitement.”
CC Greene and Olivia Vecellio opened the frame with back-to-back singles, setting the stage for Spencer’s three-run shot that changed the complexion of the game.
“Once you feel it off the bat, it’s a feeling you know and love, knowing it’s going to go over (the fence). It was great,” the Frontier catcher said.
While Spencer’s home run tied the game, the Red Hawks were far from finished in the third. Olivia Deane followed with a double and Natalie Denkiewicz walked, with the pair moving up after a Maddie Fifield sacrifice bunt. Ariana Walker came through with a two-run, bloop single that put Frontier on top, 5-3. Macy Ring added an RBI single later in the frame, and the six-spot had the team’s offense feeling particularly comfortable against Puppolo.
“We have a great offense. All the way, one through nine, even through to our reinforcements … it just kind of caught on,” Gary Deane said. “This matchup, we felt like we had it. The girls were so confident going in.”
Spencer said that once her team gets going, they are very tough to slow down offensively.
“We work super hard on the mental game. Once we knew we could hit her and were able to get things going, we’re fine,” she said. “It’s just getting things in motion sometimes that we struggle with. I think we were all having jitters in the first and second inning. We got together in the dugout and said, ‘That’s it. Let’s start playing the game we know how to play.’”
Frontier’s fourth inning put things out of reach. The Hawks sent 11 batters to the plate, batting around for the second consecutive inning. Denkiewicz (RBI single), Ring (two-run single) and Vecellio (RBI single) all drove in runs, as the squad took advantage of two Hoosac Valley errors and two wild pitches to storm ahead, 14-3.
“We had a couple big innings there. We were able to get a little bit of a buffer,” Gary Deane said.
The Hurricanes (17-5) chipped away in the final three innings, pushing three runs across in both the fifth and seventh frames. But the deficit never shrank below five runs, as Olivia Deane went all seven innings, striking out three and walking two.
“For some reason, the ball dropped on us a couple times,” Gary Deane said. “That’s not our game, we’re a better defensive team than we showed today. But I don’t think that knocked our confidence. We’ve put up double-digit runs in a lot of games this year.”
The Red Hawks reached their 10th sectional final in program history and first since 2014. That game was also against Hampshire, a 2-1 Raiders win in 10 innings.
“I think we’re surprising people,” Gary Deane said. “I’ve never been here, none of them have ever been here before, so the seedings really don’t matter. We’re just brimming with confidence.”
Spencer finished 3-for-5 with four RBIs to pace a Frontier offense that also received three hits apiece from Olivia Deane, Walker (three RBIs) and Vecellio (RBI). Denkiewicz and Ring had two hits apiece, as eight of the nine batters in the Hawks lineup had at least one hit.
Frontier Regional 16,
Hoosac Valley 11
Frontier 006 811 0 — 16 18 5
Hoosac 120 131 3 — 11 15 4
WP—Deane LP—Puppolo
Records: Frontier (16-7) Hoosac (17-5)