It’s been two years since NHIAA spring sports have played championship games, but Saturday’s Division III softball final between Hopkinton and Campbell feels like a legitimate rematch from the 2019 season.
“Looking at (Campbell’s) roster, they have 10 seniors and I think five of them were starters in that game (the 2019 final), and we have six starters back, so there are a lot of them,” Hopkinton coach Dan Meserve said.
That’s one of four championship games scheduled for Saturday that feature local teams – Concord will face Winnacunnet in the D-I baseball final at 11 a.m. at Holman Stadium in Nashua, followed by John Stark vs. St. Thomas in the D-II final. Across town at Rivier University, Concord meets Salem in the D-I softball final at 2 p.m. Hopkinton and Campbell will play on the Crimson Tide’s home diamond at Memorial Field in Concord at 2 p.m.
The cast of returning players in the D-III softball final include the starting pitchers – Hopkinton’s Megan Kimball-Rhines and Campbell’s Maddie Davis – from the Hawks’ 2-0 championship win two years ago. The other Hopkinton starters with title-game experience are Brooke Carlson, Maurgan McGrath, Julia Baer, Maddy Follansbee and Kally Murdough. Plus, Hopkinton has added some talented underclassmen to the mix like freshman Keegan St. Cyr and sophomores Kyanna Landry and Maddie Carmichael to put together a 12-2 season.
They’ll need it all against the undefeated Cougars who have rolled to a 13-0 record by scoring 12.3 runs per game.
“That program is a machine,” Meserve said.
This will be the seventh championship appearance for Campbell, and all of them have come in the last 12 years. The Cougars won in the first five finals before losing to the Hawks in 2019. Hopkinton has been to 13 previous finals and won nine titles, but all of those except for the ’19 appearance came prior to 1999.
The D-I softball final is also a rematch, but the last time Concord and Salem met in a championship game was 1994. The Crimson Tide took that one after losing to the Blue Devils in the ’93 final, which is just one of the 18 championships for Salem softball. The Blue Devils have also been runner-up eight times, so in the 46 years the NHIAA has been holding softball championships, Salem has been to 27 finals.
The Tide has some solid championship history of its own with six titles and four runner-ups, and Concord has the most recent banner (2018, while Salem last won in 2016).
Both teams have rolled to impressive records this year – Concord is 18-2, Salem 20-1. The Blue Devils are coming off a 5-3 semifinal win against Exeter, which was the last team to beat the Tide, 7-4 on May 7. Since then, Concord has won nine in a row, including tournament wins against Keene (12-0 Preliminary Round), Goffstown (7-6 quarterfinal thriller) and Merrimack (5-2 in the semifinals for coach Duke Sawyer’s 300th career win).
Unlike these softball teams with reams of championship history, John Stark baseball will be making its first appearance in a final when it meets St. Thomas for the D-II title on Saturday at Holman. These two teams actually met in the regular season and split the two games – the Saints won, 4-0, April 26 in Weare, and the Generals beat St. Thomas, 4-3, two days later in Dover.
“Those games were so early on I’m not sure how much we can really take from them,” Stark coach Dennis Pelletier said. “We’ve improved and changed a lot since then, and probably the same is true for them. But I do know the two pitchers that we’ll face on Saturday (Connor Toriello and Andrew Wertz) are good, and their catcher, (Adam) Stewart, is also very good, so that will make it hard for us to run like we did on Wednesday in the semifinals (a 12-5 win against Souhegan).”
The Generals (13-3) also have some talented arms ready to throw on Saturday in seniors Austin Hazzard, Nathan Innerfield and Alex Moore. Hazzard is the ace, and he’ll be available to pitch after leaving the semifinals early thanks to a big lead.
“I’ll have to be smart with how I use him because he’s on two days rest, and a kid with Austin’s fire to compete would want to go out there and throw 120 pitches,” Pelletier said. “But all three of our pitchers are available and all three have thrown well, and I won’t hesitate to use any of them.”
St. Thomas (11-6) had an up-and-down regular season, but found its stride in the tournament, starting with a 10-5 win against a very good Coe-Brown team, a 3-1 quarterfinal decision against Oyster River and a 5-1 win in the semifinals over Kingswood.
Concord (16-4) will have its top two pitchers rested and ready to go against Winnacunnet (18-4) in the D-I final. Senior Jonah Wachter pitched four innings last Saturday to open the Tide’s 3-1 quarterfinal win against Bedford, and then he closed the 6-4 semifinal decision against Keene on Wednesday with a 1-2-3 seventh inning, so he’ll be available. Senior Tyler Wright worked three innings on Sunday in the conclusion of the storm-delayed quarterfinal, so he’ll be on plenty of rest for the final.
Concord will need those two be sharp against the Warriors, who averaged 8.45 runs per game in the regular season. Those bats came out in Winnacunnet’s 15-3 quarterfinal win against Portsmouth, but the Warriors also showed they can win with pitching and defense in their 3-1 Preliminary Round playoff win against Dover, and in their 3-0 semifinal decision against Londonderry.