Six local teams will be playing in five high school championships on Saturday, and all five of those games are rematches from the regular season. No local squad is looking forward to the rematch more than the Hopkinton boys’ lacrosse team, which will face Pelham in the Division III final at Bill Ball Stadium in Exeter at 2:30 p.m.
The Hawks won the last two D-III titles as part of back-to-back 17-0 seasons. They carried that winning streak into this season and pushed it to 42 straight before losing to Pelham, 9-5, on May 10. Now it’s the top-seeded Pythons (16-0) with the winning streak and the No. 2 Hawks (15-1) looking to break it.
“Definitely a sour taste in our mouths from that loss and snapping our win streak like that,” Hopkinton coach Deacon Blue said. “We had kind of a rough game before, so we’re definitely going to bring it to ‘em. A few of the guys already watched that game tape to see what we did wrong and try to improve from that, so I think we’ll be ready.”
Hawks fans will be spread thin on Saturday. Not only is the Hopkinton boys’ lacrosse team playing in a final, the baseball and softball teams will be in their respective D-III championships as well. It’s an amazing end to an amazing year for the Hawks, who have already won seven championships – golf, girls’ soccer, girls’ cross country, boys’ ice hockey (co-op team with John Stark), girls’ Nordic skiing, boys’ Nordic skiing and, earlier this week, girls’ lacrosse.
“We have some sports-crazy kids in this school. It’s awesome as an athletic director,” Hopkinton AD Dan Meserve said earlier this spring. “We’ve got like 70 percent of our kids involved in sports and a lot of them are involved in three seasons.”
No Hopkinton team has benefited from all that athletic success and diversity than the softball team, which is coached by Meserve. The softball Hawks are very young – they start three sophomores, including pitcher Megan Kimball-Rhines, and three freshmen – yet they had enough moxie to beat New Hampshire Gatorade Player of the Year Madison Labrie from Mascenic on the road in the quarterfinals, 2-1, and then knock off No. 6 Belmont, 8-0, in Thursday’s semifinal to earn a spot in Saturday’s 2 p.m. final against No. 4 Campbell, which will be played at Plymouth State University’s Chase Field.
“It’s kind of funny, Hopkinton hasn’t been in a (softball) championship in (21) years,” Meserve said after the semifinal. “But these guys, I know they’re young, but they all play soccer, which made it to a championship. They play field hockey, which made it to the championship. They play basketball which last year made it to a championship. With the 15 girls on the team, they have 24 final four or championship appearances between them, so yes, it’s a different one, but they’ve been here before. It’s a mature, young group.”
Campbell beat Hopkinton in their May 9 regular-season meeting, 14-8. Both teams were unbeaten headed into that one and they both unleashed some potent offense, combing for 22 hits (the Cougars had 14 of them). The difference was errors from the Hawks, who know they will have to clean that up to get a different result in the rematch.
The Hopkinton baseball team is hoping it plays just like it did in its regular-season matchup with White Mountains, the team it will face in Saturday’s 1 p.m. D-III final at Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester. The Hawks beat the Spartans, 2-0, in a game played at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on April 24. Hopkinton earned the win with solid pitching, good defense and opportunistic offense.
The No. 4 Hawks (16-4) figure they have to do the same on Saturday against No. 6 White Mountains (14-6), the defending D-III champs who beat No. 2 Gilford in Monday’s first semifinal, 3-2, before the Hawks knocked off No. 1 Belmont, 4-2, in the second semifinal. Hopkinton junior Sam Crawford earned the pitching win against Belmont with a complete-game effort, and he beat White Mountains in New York with a complete-game effort. But what Crawford will be thinking about before Saturday’s game is his start in the 2017 D-IV final, when he pitched the Hawks to a 5-3 win against Pittsfield at Delta Dental Stadium.
“I’m just trying to think back to last time we were there and just think about what I did before the game, my routine, and just try to repeat as much as I can,” Crawford said. “The goal for me is feeling confident, feeling comfortable and just knowing that I have all the pitches I can throw for that game.”
Pittsfield will also be back at Delta Dental Stadium on Saturday. No local team vying for a title is more familiar with their opponent than the No. 2 Panthers (19-1), who will face rival Newmarket (17-2) in the 10 a.m. D-IV baseball final. Pittsfield won both of the regular-season games between these two – 7-2 on May 14 at home and 3-2 on May 21 in Newmarket. But the recent rivalry goes deeper than that.
The No. 4 Mules beat Pittsfield in last year’s baseball semifinals. Many of the players in that game were also part of the 2018 D-IV boys’ basketball championship where Pittsfield beat Newmarket, and in the 2017 D-IV boys’ soccer first-round playoff game where the Panthers knocked out the Mules.
“It’s definitely a rivalry, we always seem to battle with them, baseball, basketball, it always seems like a good game,” Pittsfield coach Rob Stockman said after his team’s win against Newmarket on May 14.
Beating the Mules twice in the last three weeks will surely give Pittsfield confidence heading into the final, but Newmarket has to be feeling good about itself, too. The Mules haven’t given up a run in three playoff games – they beat No. 13 Pittsburg-Canaan, 9-0, No. 5 Wilton-Lyndeborough, 6-0, and No. 1 Woodsville, 8-0.
The fifth title game on Saturday with area ties is a local double knot with No. 3 Merrimack Valley (16-3) facing No. 4 John Stark (16-3) in the D-II softball final at Plymouth State University’s Chase Field on Saturday at 5 p.m. MV beat the defending champion Generals, 6-5, when the two met on May 17 in Penacook, and John Stark was already thinking about a rematch after that loss, which snapped its nine-game winning streak.
“We made a bunch of mistakes today and gave up some unearned runs (three),” Stark coach Gerry Morin said after the May 17 game. “If we see them again, we won’t make those mistakes again, I can tell you that, because these girls don’t like to lose.”
The Generals just showed they know how to reverse a regular-season decision when they took down No. 1 Milford, 10-2, in Tuesday’s semifinal. The Spartans beat Stark, 3-2, in the season opener on April 11. Milford ran the table from there, winning 16 straight games before running into the Generals and pitcher Izabella Nelson in the semifinals. Nelson, who led Stark to the title last year as a freshman, struck out eight in the win and the only runs she allowed came on a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly.
Nelson will be tested by a Merrimack Valley offense that has been hot for most of the season. The Pride is averaging 10.6 runs per game, has 11 players on its roster hitting over .300 and erupted for seven runs in the first inning of its 14-4 semifinal win against No. 2 Coe-Brown. And when the Bears answered with four runs in the second inning, the Pride responded in kind.
“The girls played outstanding,” MV coach Sam York said after the semifinal win. “We certainly didn’t expect against a team of (Coe-Brown’s) caliber to come out and score seven runs in the first, but really I thought the key besides that was when they scored four, we jumped right back and scored four to answer and sort of quell the storm a little bit.”