Mired at 2-6, the Bishop Grimes baseball team earned its most impressive win of the season on Saturday when it came back from a four-run deficit to beat defending Section III Class B champion Marcellus 7-6.
The Mustangs, who had lost to Westhill the day before, broke out of an early 2-2 tie and led, 6-2, going to the bottom of the fifth inning.
That’s where the Cobras’ bats woke up, producing a pair of runs to cut the margin in half. Then, in the sixth, Grimes got three more runs to zoom out in front.
Billy Blasland, with two doubles and two RBIs, led the rally, while Zac Cousineau tripled and earned a pair of RBIs of his own. Chris Hendrick also drove in a run as Tom Steinberg and Josh Allan each scored twice.
Though he gave up six runs, Steinberg pitched five innings and kept the game within reach. Then Cousineau worked the last two innings, including a scoreless seventh, for the win.
This followed, by less than 24 hours, a 10-1 defeat at Tully on Friday where the Black Knights, already ahead 2-0, broke it open with seven runs in the bottom of the third, chasing starter Ryan Martin from the game. Through Hendrick and Ryan Gosson were effective in relief, Grimes could not recover.
In its first game after the break, Bishop Grimes’ softball team got a superb pitching effort from Madison Ware on its way to beating Weedsport 2-1.
Ware threw a one-hitter, surrendering a run in the sixth inning after the Cobras took a 2-0 lead with single runs in the first and fourth frames. Giving up just one walk, Ware struck out four.
Grimes won despite Weedsport ace Abby Marsden recording 12 strikeouts. Megan Driscoll had a walk, single and RBI for the Cobras as Nicole Donati drove in the other run. Ware and Taylor Bourdon scored those runs.
Not content with that, the Cobras hosted Port Byron a day later and made four different comebacks to pull out a 9-8, eight-inning victory over the Panthers.
In the first four innings alone, Grimes trailed 2-0, 5-4 and 7-6, and every time roared back, forcing a 7-7 tie by the end of the fourth.
They stayed that way until the top of the eighth, when Port Byron inched back in front 8-7. One more time, the Cobras would come back, pushing across the tying and winning runs in the bottom of that frame.
Four players – Ware, Ashley Morgan, Nicole Bourdon and Lauren Vaughn – had two hits apiece. Morgan and Donati each drove in two runs as Driscoll added an RBI. Donati pitched the first four innings before Ware took over in the fifth, only allowing one run the rest of the way.
Grimes’ win streak ended last Friday with a 12-4 defeat to Marcellus, the Mustangs getting runs in each of the first five innings.
Driscoll, in defeat, managed two hits and an RBI as Claire Williams also drove in a run. Tabby McBride and Meghan Witkowski each hit home runs for Marcellus as McBride added a triple and double and finished with five RBIs.
