For a moment on Friday afternoon in the 3A East regional championship game against Northeast, following a four-run top of the third inning, visiting Mt. Hebron found itself in control.
That moment, however, was fleeting.
Northeast responded to the Vikings' surge by sending 14 batters to the plate in the bottom of the third, scoring eight times and taking a lead it never surrendered the rest of the way en route to a 12-7 victory that secured the program its first region championship since 2007.
"We talked about it, immediately after they put four on the board — I didn't need all four runs right away, but I needed a couple. We needed to get back some of the momentum. But, I tell you what, I will take the eight (we scored) every day," said Northeast coach Joe Hart. "We just had to stay within ourselves and put the ball in play … we got great at bats up and down the line-up."
Afterward, Northeast (17-4) sophomore pitcher Jenna Matulonis, who settled down after a rocky first couple innings to earn the complete-game victory, said the win was huge for the program after falling a game short of the Anne Arundel county championship this spring.
"It felt really good to come out here (and win) because county's slipped away from us and we really wanted that, but we didn't get it," Matulonis said. "So this was our main goal because (coach) brought out the ball from 2007 and basically put it in our heads. We really wanted to make him proud and make each other proud as a team."
On the other side, Mt. Hebron (13-5) was appearing in its fourth straight regional title game. Unfortunately for the Vikings, the loss marked the third defeat in that stretch with a berth in the state semifinals on the line.
Mt. Hebron scored seven times on Friday and had nine hits against a Northeast team that had held each of its first two playoff opponents to just one run, but it simply wasn't enough.
"We had one bad inning and it cost us against a good team. We knew we could score more runs, but when they put up eight that was just too big of a hole," Struhar said. "Rylee (Kinsella) did a great job of coming in (at pitcher) after that and shutting them down, but Evvie (Buehlman) got us here and it's one of those things where you dance with the person who brought you.
"She won 13 games for us this year, really did a good job of getting out of jams all season, but we just ran into a really good softball team today that ended up beating us twice this year."
It was thanks to Buehlman (3-4, double, 3 runs scored) that Mt. Hebron was able to grab an early 1-0 lead. The Vikings' senior led off the game with a single and then later came around to score on a RBI ground out by Meghan Holquist.
Northeast then answered with two runs in the bottom of the first, getting a 2-RBI double from Kirstin Midkiff, to give the Eagles their first lead.
After a scoreless second inning for both squads, Mt. Hebron made the game's first big push in the third and it started with back-to-back singles by Buehlman and Rachel Cadigan. Two batters later, Holquist delivered a two-out 2-RBI single to put the Vikings back ahead. Then, freshman Kieran Davis came up and launched a 2-run home run over the fence in left center to make it 5-2.
"That was one of the farthest balls I've seen hit … the outfielders didn't even move," Struhar said. "We knew we were going to score runs today. We've been hitting the ball hard the entire second half of the season."
The problem on this day was that Northeast hitting the ball too. The Eagles got things going in their half of the third with singles from Matulonis and Midkiff, then Alexis Brengle launched a ball off the center fielder's glove to score a run and the flood gates opened.
A 2-RBI hit from Christina Jordan, a 3-RBI triple by Sarah Gordon, a RBI-single by Coral Dittmar — it all added up to an eight-run inning that featured six hits, three walks and a five-run lead, 10-5.
"I don't know where all that came from, honestly," Matulonis said. "It was a really good feeling to know that once one person hit, we all wanted to hit and make each other proud and do what we knew we could do."
Staked to the lead, Matulonis proceeded to hold Mt. Hebron scoreless over the next three innings. She allowed just one base runner in each of the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, getting a huge double play to end the fifth and a strikeout to end the sixth.
"Once we got to the fifth inning, we talked about nine more outs. Let's just get three at a time," Hart said. "Jenna did absolutely everything we asked her to do and that's a very good hitting team over there. That line-up, you have to work them, and I thought today we did a good job of that."
Northeast tacked on insurance runs in the fourth — on a RBI hit from Gordon — and in the sixth — on a RBI hit from Maria Weddle.
Mt. Hebron never stopped fighting, though, scoring twice in its final at bat of the afternoon. Buehlman and Kinsella each hit doubles to plate a run and then Steph Bluhm later added a RBI-single of her own to make it a 12-7 game.
But, eventually, Matulonis got a game-ending groundout back to herself at pitcher and Northeast had itself a region championship.
Dittmar said afterward that the team has great respect for Mt. Hebron and that's what makes the victory that much sweeter.
"A lot of the girls on our team have played against the girls that play for Hebron since we were little … we knew they were nothing to walk over," she said. "So winning this and winning this by as much as we did, and playing as well as we did defensively and offensively … that just puts us in a really good state of mind going into the next game and hopefully the game after that.
"I think that if we bring what we have, I believe in us 100 percent that we can go all the way."
Northeast 12, Mt. Hebron 7
123 456 7 R-H-E
MH 104 000 2 7-9-3
NE 208 101 x 12-12-1