Blue sky and warm sunshine greeted Hopkinton softball Monday afternoon for NHIAA opening day. Coming off a championship loss in 2021, the Hawks bounced back with an emphatic 25-0 win over Inter-Lakes in a five-inning mercy-rule game.
Steph Elrick was in the circle for Hopkinton and allowed just one hit in four innings of work. Elrick bagged 10 strikeouts to begin her sophomore season.
“Steph Elrick pitching three strikes was great,” said Hopkinton coach Dan Meserve. “We didn’t have a lot of opportunistic plays in the field, but we made the ones that we did.”
The Hawks were clean in the field with no errors. On the offensive side, they were aided by numerous mistakes from an Inter-Lakes team with many players competing in their first-ever game of softball.
Hopkinton put four runs up in the bottom of the first. Elrick got three of the RBI for the inning with a ground-rule double that she roped down the left-field line. In the second inning, the Hawks had their talons out and lashed eight more runs onto the scoreboard, with Beth Taylor grabbing herself an RBI double.
The third inning was more of the same for Hopkinton. Maddie Carmichael blasted a line-drive home run to dead center in the highlight of the game. The three-run homer was complemented by four more runs to make it 19-0 after three. Both teams heavily rotated in players to give everyone a chance to bat before the game was called.
Meserve was happy with the grace his team had in victory with such a lopsided scoreline.
“I liked the sportsmanship our team had. I thought that was really important,” said Meserve. “It’s always good to win the first game. We’ve got to be ready for the next steps and then we’ll go from there one game at a time.”
The next steps come against Somersworth and Mascenic. Meserve was complimentary of both teams and noted that his squad would need to be ready to face a tougher opponent than they opened the season against.
“I’ve heard they’ve (Somersworth) got a very good pitcher, so we’re going to have to be ready for that,” Meserve said. “We’re going to have to speed our bats up, and Friday we’re playing Mascenic and they’re very good. So the rest of this week, you know, we’ll see how we do against a faster pitcher on Wednesday, and then Friday should be a good test for us.”