In order to get a shot at the Section III Class A championship, the Jamesville-DeWitt softball team would need to climb past the reigning champions – a task that it handled with, arguably, its best performance of the season.
The showdown would take place in last Thursday’s semifinal at the Gillette Road complex in Cicero, where the no. 2 seed Red Rams met up with no. 3 seed New Hartford.
Here, everything clicked for J-D, especially at the plate, where it pounded away at the Spartans and did not let up until it had recorded a 15-4 victory and earned a date in next Monday’s final at Gillette against top seed Oneida, who blanked Vernon-Verona-Sherrill 13-0 in the other semifinal.
Since the Oneida-VVS game was first, the Rams and New Hartford had to wait for them to finish, meaning a late start that, for whatever reason, ended up favoring J-D.
Answering the Spartans’ two-run first inning, the Rams got on the board in the bottom of the first and then took over, scoring three times in the second and four times in the third to seize the lead for good.
J-D got runs in every inning except the fourth, tacking on two runs in the fifth and five runs in the sixth on the way to a total of 14 hits, helped by a porous Spartans defense that committed eight errors.
Carly O’Hern, with three hits and three RBIs, led the Rams’ charge. Amanda Sumida, Hannah Gunther and Emily Clapper had two hits apiece, with Clapper scoring four runs and Shayna Myshrall crossing the plate three times. Alyssa Robens contributed an RBI and Makenzie Keeler scored twice
Just to get there, J-D, who had a first-round bye, had to get past no. 7 seed Cortland in last Tuesday’s Class A quarterfinal, which saw the Rams answer a rough start with an emphatic answer at the plate that set the tone for a 12-2 victory over the Purple Tigers.
Cortland got to Sumida for both of its runs in the top of the first inning, but the Rams quickly erased that 2-0 deficit with four runs in the bottom of the first.
A single run in the third inning made it 5-2, and J-D got clear with four runs in the fifth and three runs in the sixth off Purple Tigers pitcher Cady Walts.
Robens and Myshrall both hit home runs, with Robens and Sumida both getting three RBIs as Erika Siegel doubled and drove in two runs. O’Hern, Gunther and Kayleigh Hamernik had one RBI apiece. Sumida blanked Cortland after those first-inning struggles and gave up just three hits in her complete-game effort.
CBA, the no. 6 seed in Class B, survived the opening round by winning 11-2 at Westhill, but could not get past a second road trip in the sectional tournament, dropping last Tuesday’s Class B quarterfinal to no. 3 seed Holland Patent by a 3-1 margin.
