At last, the Solvay softball team has climbed all the way to the top and has a state championship to show for its long and successful labors.
Bearcats fans had waited more than three decades for another title run to match that long-ago crown claimed in 1986. They were teased in 2014, when Solvay lost the state final to Eden by a single run, and again in 2015, when the Bearcats were again stopped at the last hurdle by Ichabod Crane, again by a single run.
But the 2017 edition of Solvay got the ending right.
First, the Bearcats powered past Cohoes (Section II) 5-2 in Saturday’s state semifinal at Moreau Recreation Park in South Glens Falls. Then, in a tense championship game, Lauren Nichols threw one more post-season shutout and Solvay got the close decision its favor when it beat Depew (Section VI) 1-0.
All through this memorable spring, Nichols was the focal point of Solvay’s efforts. She had thrown four no-hittters, two of them perfect games, and had shut out five consecutive post-season opponents in the Bearcats’ run to the state final four.
Nichols’ shutout streak would reach 40 consecutive innings in the state semifinal against Cohoes, but only after Solvay got the quick start it longed for, jumping on the Tigers with three runs in the bottom of the first inning.
Maya Martineau got it going with a leadoff single, reached second on a sacrifice bunt and then sped home on Nichols’ double, followed by a Caitlin McCann RBI double and a single by Nadea Davis that scored Izzy Lambert, who ran for McCann.
Solvay didn’t sit on that 3-0 lead, either, adding single runs in the third and fifth innings driven in by Martineau, who finished with three hits, and Aleah Yaizzo. So it had a big enough cushion that, when Cohoes broke through against Nichols for both of its runs in the sixth inning, it didn’t hurt them.
Surrendering two hits and three walks, Nichols struck out 10, and got the Bearcats to the state final. Awaiting them was a Depew side from the Buffalo suburbs that needed a no-hitter from its pitching ace, Karsen Cotton, to knock off state no. 1-ranked Babylon 1-0 in the other semifinal game.
With two superb arms dueling each other, it surprised no one that the first three innings of the final was a 0-0 standoff. Both sides sensed that a single run could decide matters, and it did.
In the top of the fourth, Nichols drilled a shot to right field and didn’t stop until she was on third base with a triple. Then McCann, using a new bat she had just bought, hit a grounder that Depew second baseman Andrea Taboni snared and threw home to catcher Juliana Ciesielski.
Before Nichols could try to elude Ciesielski’s tag, though, the umpire ruled that Ciesielski obstructed Nichols’ path to the plate, and the Bearcats had that run on the board. It nearly got more in the sixth, loading the bases, but Cotton worked out of it with a diving stop from Taboni and a force play at second.
With the determined look she had shown throughout her decorated Solvay career, Nichols, who is going to Le Moyne College this fall, worked through the late innings, getting great defense from Althea Davies in right field when she made a running catch on Jordyn Petyk’s for the first out in the bottom of the seventh.
Two outs later, Nichols, with her ninth strikeout against just two hits allowed, finished it off.
Late on Saturday night, a group of Solvay Fire Department trucks accompanied the bus bringing the Bearcats back to Solvay High School. Students and community members cheered as long-time head coach Phil Merrill exited the bus holding the state championship trophy up high, and the players followed, just as enthusisastic.
It was a celebration 31 years in the making.
