CONCORD – The Concord High softball team isn’t used to playing nail-biters.
Besides last Wednesday’s 2-0 loss to Winnacunnet, Concord’s won each of its games by at least nine runs. But on Tuesday at Rollins Park, locked in a 2-2 tie against Goffstown in the bottom of the eighth inning, Concord junior Sarah Taylor roped a ball to right field that the Grizzlies’ Ryleigh Boucher misplayed, allowing Taylor to score to win the game in dramatic fashion, 3-2.
“I had been seeing the gap down there, and I wanted to hit it down there,” Taylor said referring to right-center field. “But I was just looking for a base hit, honestly.”
With no fence in the outfield, the ball just rolled and rolled and rolled, much like the home run that Goffstown’s Casey Rivard hit in the top of the first that put the visitors ahead 2-0 early.
Now 6-1, Concord finds itself in a strong position,a little over a third of the way through the season.
Here are three notes on the Tide, following Tuesday’s victory:
Maddy Wachter dominates in the circle: After allowing the two-run home run in the top of the first inning, Wachter mowed down the Goffstown lineup, striking out 17 across eight innings of work, only allowing one hit the rest of the way.
With the Tide having evened up the score in the bottom of the first, Wachter held down the Grizzlies’ offense, setting the stage for Taylor’s walk-off.
“She’s just so determined out there,” head coach Duke Sawyer said. “She just goes to work. Nothing seems to faze her. (After) that home run in the first inning, she just went right back to work.”
Last week’s loss to Winnacunnet helped prepare Concord for Tuesday: Last year, the Tide didn’t lose until its 18th game of the season. During that long winning streak, Sawyer said it likely became a little easier to overlook some of the issues that wound up costing the team in its championship-game loss to Exeter.
Losing last week at Winnacunnet served as an important reminder, earlier in the schedule, on where the Tide’s focus needs to lie.
“Our energy got down once we started to get behind,” Taylor said of last week’s loss. “I think we needed to realize that we have to keep our energy up the entire game. Whether we’re winning, whether we’re losing, whether it’s tied, we always have to keep the energy up and just keep swinging and swinging.”
On Tuesday, that mind-set rewarded the team with a win.
Despite hitting a number of pitches right on the nose, the balls put in play were often right at Goffstown defenders. Sticking with their approach, just focusing on hitting the ball hard paid off in the end. So did the play of their defense.
“Our defense played well this game, (and) in tight games, that’s what we need,” Sawyer said. “That’s what we lacked last year in the tighter games. I think it opened their eyes a little bit.”
Winning a tight game boosts confidence for the playoffs: While it might still be a bit too early to start looking ahead to the playoffs, a win like Tuesday’s plays a big role in building confidence for when those big games arrive. It’s one thing to win games 18-1 or 12-0, like the Tide have in their previous two wins; it’s another to find a way to grind out a win when the bounces don’t always go in your favor and the opposing pitcher is locked in.
Goffstown’s Sophie Roussel matched Wachter in the circle until Taylor’s walk-off. Her changeup, in particular, gave the Tide hitters lots of trouble.
“She was locating it well, I thought,” Sawyer said. “We got fooled on the change quite a bit. The catcher did a good job mixing up her pitches.”
But the ability to hang in there and ultimately pick up the win looms large for a Concord team with championship hopes.
“This is huge to pull out a game like this, to hang in there like that,” Sawyer said. “These girls play a lot of softball, so I’m not surprised in what they do out there.”