Mount de Sales softball scores three in bottom of the seventh to rally past McDonogh, 11-10

Mount de Sales junior Sammy Brown drilled a deep drive over the head of McDonogh left fielder Claire Cook with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning to score Brooke Fuhr from third base with the game-winning run in an 11-10 triumph.

Before the pitch, Brown, a junior and the oldest player on the team, wasn’t sure she was going to swing away.

“He [the third base coach] called a steal and then I was confused, and then I was reading the card and then I read it wrong and he just said, ‘Hit away,’” Brown said. “I just wanted to put the ball in play, I wanted to get my runner around. I’ve been struggling a little bit hitting and I haven’t felt a rhythm, so I just wanted to get a line drive.”

The host Sailors trailed 10-8 entering the inning and Olivia Ross (4-for-5) started the rally with a single and stolen base. Olivia Berger walked and both runners advanced with stolen bases on a fake bunt by Ava Remesch.

Remesch’s run-scoring ground out plated the first run and Berger moved to third before Fuhr reached on an intentional walk. On the next pitch to Kat Wright, Berger scored the tying run on a wild pitch. Fuhr advanced two bases on the play and scored on Brown’s skyscraper.

Both teams endured some rocky innings on the way to the dramatic finish.

The Sailors manufactured a 1-0 lead in the second when Wilson (3-for-4) reached on an infield hit, stole second and third and scored after a botched rundown on a wild pitch.

McDonogh scored three in the third, with hits by Khloe Diggs and Mackenzie Preston (2-for-3) igniting the rally.

An RBI single by Brown in the bottom of the third cut the lead in half, but the Eagles answered and took a 6-2 lead in the top of the fourth thanks to a leadoff hit by Arianna Fowlkes and five walks.

Junior pitcher Remesch relieved freshman starter Fuhr and escaped a base-loaded rally by getting Bridget Schaeffer to fly out. The Sailors rallied with a pair of runs in the bottom of the fourth. A leadoff double by Wilson started the uprising and Ross and Berger had RBIs.

Mount de Sales took an 8-6 lead in the bottom of the fourth. Hits by Ross, Berger and Fuhr and three Eagles errors fueled the rally.

“We’ve got to make things happen, we can’t wait,” Mount de Sales coach Pete Waskiewicz said. “We try to make them make mistakes and we capitalize on them.”

The coach also praised his squad’s base runners that included several players getting under tags after the throws had beat them.

“They’ve got some good instincts and you can’t teach that and they’ve got to want it,” he said.

The Eagles refused to wilt and rallied for the lead with four runs in the top of the sixth.

A one-out walk to Cook, infield hit by Preston and RBI double by Neera Gandi was followed by a two-run double by Abbey Suk and run-scoring single by Fowlkes, but the Sailors rallied in the final frame.

Gandi was the hard-luck losing pitcher after throwing her second straight complete game.

“In the first game. my pitcher threw a gem,” McDonogh coach John Folfas said of Gandi. “She didn’t pitch bad here, but you just can’t make errors, I’ve got so many inexperienced players out here.”

The Sailors improved to 2-1.

“We stay in it, we are a young team and we never give up,” Brown said. “It’s our year, it’s going to happen, we are going to do amazing this year.”

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