Greylock Thunder 12U Team Wins County Title
ADAMS, Mass. – Abby Dieterich went 3-for-3 with three doubles and four runs batted in on Wednesday to lead the Greylock Thunder 12-and-under softball team to an 18-4 win over Dalton in the final game of the Berkshire County Tournament.
Three Greylock pitchers combined for 12 strikeouts in the five-inning win in the summer finale for both teams at Russell Field.
Dieterich led a nine-hit attack for the Thunder, which also got two base hits apiece from Tenley Biros and Liana Steiner.
“We’ve spent a lot of time on hits with them, all winter, all springtime,” Greylock coach Michael Biros said. “We’ve had an amazing season with this team. We lose five of them. This game is their last game, and we’ve had most of them for four years. [Co-coach William Greene] has been five years, 10U, coaching kids all the way up through this.
“This is definitely a good group we’re going to miss. We look forward to next year, too, obviously.”
But this year’s edition of the Thunder 12U can lay claim to four tournament finals – including travel tournaments and the summer-long county league – and two championship game wins.
Dalton manufactured the game’s first run on Wednesday night.
Rilla Madison led off the game by drawing a walk. She stole second base and took third on an error before Cali St. John drove her home with a sacrifice fly to center field.
Biros, who went two innings in the circle for Greylock, settled down from there, getting a ground ball herself and a swinging strike to end the inning.
The Thunder then went to work offensively, scoring nine times in the bottom of the first.
Dieterich supplied a two-run double, and Biros had an infield single in the rally, which also saw Greylock batters work nine of their 13 walks.
The Thunder then tacked on runs in each of its next three at-bats, including a five-run third when Marie Fanchini singled and scored a run, Biros singled again, and Steiner had a two-run single.
Dalton scratched out a run in the top of the third and put two more across without a hit in the fifth, when they had the bases loaded with a 14-run deficit, needing three to keep the game going. But Greylock’s Steiner, who started the game behind the dish, got her third strikeout of the inning to end the game.
“Great job by Greylock,” Dalton coach Leo O’Keefe said. “We played them seven times this year. One time, we got them real close. In the Dalton tournament, we were 1-1 going into the sixth inning.
“Missing a couple of girls tonight didn’t help. I’m proud of them, though. They played hard. They could have just quit getting down 9-1 early. We struggled early to throw some strikes and get some outs, but then, the rest of the game, we played pretty hard.”
Evelyn Richardson also pitched for Greylock in the win. St. John, McKenzie Moynihan and Eva Francis took turns in the circle for Dalton.
Both teams used all their players in uniform in the lineup, and the Thunder had a chance to move some players around in the field as the game went on.
“We played the league to give some of the girls that don’t play the infield positions and don’t pitch and don’t catch the opportunity to do that,” Biros said. “Because sometimes in tournament ball, they’re tough teams, and the best players have to be in their best positions. We chose to do this to allow those other players to learn new positions and to develop, because coming into high school, they may not be in right field.”
“We’re very big on being developmental,” Greene added. “We want to build the skills so those girls can play almost anywhere on the field. When it does come to the [travel] tournaments, they have positions they start at and that’s where they stay most of the tournaments. But county league, we let them get some time in those other positions so they can be backups in the tournaments.”
