Greylock 14U Softball Team Tops Dalton
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – The Greylock Thunder 14-and-under travel softball team Saturday ended pool play in its Summer Storm Tournament just like it began pool play on Friday: with a win over Berkshire County rival.
Genevieve Lagess went 2-for-2 with a pair of triples and scored three times, and the Thunder overcame an early deficit to take a 13-9 win over Dalton in the pool play finale on Francis Millard Field.
On Sunday morning, the eight teams in the tournament will be seeded for the 10 a.m. quarter-final round.
The four survivors move on to a pair of 1:30 p.m. semi-finals with the title game scheduled for about 3:30 p.m.
The Thunder, which beat the Berkshire Force on Friday night, started its Saturday with an 8-3 loss to the South Troy Dodgers.
Then it started its third game of the tournament with a 3-0 lead after Lagess tripled and scored on a wild pitch in the first and Marlee Arnhold and Sadie Stuebner scored in the second.
But Dalton battled back in the bottom of the second.
Mallory Radwich led off with an inside-the-park home run in the right field corner.
Grace Hunt and Abby Munday followed with a walk and an infield single, respectively.
Hunt scored when Sophia Mottor drew a bases loaded walk, and Layla Soules drove in Munday to make it 3-3.
An error eventually brought home two more runs to give Dalton a 5-3 lead, but Greylock’s Avery Lane got the third out of the inning on one of her five strikeouts to leave the bases loaded.
Her offense then gave her five runs and the lead in the top of third.
Gianna Witek started the rally with a single up the middle and came home when Lagess tripled off the fence in right field.
Kenadi Arnhold drove in Lagess to tie the game, 5-5, and reached on a two-base error on the play. After Lane worked a walk, Marlee Arnhold’s infield single plated Kenadi. Lane then scored from third on the back end of a delayed double steal with Arnhold to make it 7-5. Marlee Arnhold eventually scored on a ball to the backstop to give the Thunder a three-run lead.
They pushed that margin to eight runs with another five-run rally in the top of the fourth. That inning was started by back-to-back singles from Emma Lemire and Kyleigh Cooper.
In the bottom of the fourth, with the tournament’s time limit indicating Dalton had just one more at-bat, it put its first three runners on base by way of walks and a hit batter. Sydney Payson then drove in a run with an infield single.
Two more runs scored on a passed ball and an RBI groundout, but Lane retired three straight hitters to end the rally, getting the final out on a popup to the circle.
Greylock finished pool play with a record of 2-1. So did the Berkshire Force, which bounced back after Friday’s loss to beat the Columbia County (N.Y.) Reds, 12-8, and the Halfmoon (N.Y.) Aftershock, 9-5, on Saturday.
In the day’s first game for the Force, Kylie Duhamel went 2-for-3 with a home run, a triple and four RBIs to lead a 14-hit Berkshire attack.
Harper Keay and Lillian MacDonald each had a pair of hits, including a double.
In the circle, Keay and Amaya Alger split time against Columbia County, striking out four and allowing five earned runs.
Against Halfmoon, Ava McMahon went all five innings in the circle. She struck out two, walked two and allowed four earned runs to get the win.
Duhamel went 3-for-3 with a double and a pair of RBIs, and McMahon helped her cause by going 1-for-1 and scoring three times.
