For four innings of Friday night's Class 3A state championship game, it looked as if the C. Milton Wright softball team might have found a way to beat Northern-Calvert.
The Mustangs had a 4-1 lead after the first inning, but the Patriots rallied with eight unanswered runs in the final three innings to win, 9-4, at Maryland's Robert E. Taylor Stadium.
It was Northern's eighth consecutive 3A state title. The Patriots beat C.M. Wright in last year's state semifinals, which added to the sting of Friday's loss.
“It does, because last year in the semifinals, we lost in the very last inning,” senior Caroline Weimer said. “We thought that coming in today, it was going to be so easy to beat them [with their top pitcher having graduated], but they got us in the end.”
Northern (22-2) got an RBI single from Sarah Bennett in the fifth inning. In the sixth, Michaela Schaefer fueled the game-changing rally with a one-out single. Marissa Wimmer was hit by a pitch, and Holy Van Wie walked to load the bases. Gina Seifert singled in the first run, and Kassidy Cross followed with a single that cleared the bases.
Bennett and Kaylee Cross hit back-to-back singles to begin the seventh. Schaefer drove both in with a single, and the final run scored after one of seven Mustangs errors.
The Patriots' first run came in the first inning. Kassidy Cross hit a leadoff single and raced to second when the ball was misplayed in center field. She stole third and scored on Bennett's groundout.
Freshman Emily Kim's one-out triple got C.M. Wright going in the bottom of the first. With two outs, Jenny Lynch was hit by a pitch, and fellow freshman Katie Murphy followed with a single, scoring Kim.
Quinn Ursprung was also hit by a pitch, loading the bases for Morghan Fulton. Fulton hit a pitch deep into the right-center-field gap, driving in all three runners.
“I just knew I had to get a hit because we were down one, and it was so nerve-racking,” Fulton said. “Both the pitches were right down the middle, so I just took it to right-center.”
C.M. Wright had runners on base in every inning except the fifth but could not score any more runs. Fulton took the loss for the Mustangs (21-4), allowing 12 hits over 6 2/3 innings.