AUGUSTA — The recipe for success for the Cony High School softball team is pretty straightforward. The Rams want to get good pitching, make all the plays defensively and then try and put ample pressure on the opposition to generate enough runs to win.
In a 6-3 win over visiting Mt. Blue on Friday at Newman Brann Field, Cony might not have been at its absolute best, but the Rams were good enough to win the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class A game and even their record at 2-2.
“The kids put the bat on the ball and our defense played pretty well,” Cony coach Rocky Gaslin said. “And (pitcher Gaby McGuire) didn’t walk anyone. You can’t ask for anything better than that.”
The Rams scratched out five runs in the fourth inning against three different Mt. Blue pitchers, and McGuire held off a Cougar rally in the seventh to go the distance for the win.
Catcher Allee Cloutier went 3 for 3 with a run scored for the Rams, stealing one base and taking another on a passed ball that put her in position to score on McGuire’s sacrifice fly to right to make it a 4-0 game at the time.
“Usually, I have a courtesy runner for me and I don’t get to run the bases, but this time I actually made it all the way to home and that was nice,” Cloutier said with a laugh. “But the extra bases — any passed ball or anything, we take any opportunity to grab an extra base.”
After Mt. Blue’s Adelle Foss held Cony to just one run on two hits through the first three innings, Cougar coach Ron Smith handed the ball over to fellow sophomore Ellie DeCarolis to start the fourth — and the Rams took advantage. By the time Smith walked out to the circle to take the ball from DeCarolis, Cony had scored three times and a hit batter and two walks had loaded the bases with Mt. Blue in a 4-0 hole.
Cony senior second baseman Delaney Keithley greeted the first offering from freshman reliever Madisyn Smith by drilling it up the middle for a two-run single and a 6-0 Cony lead.
“We take it one base at a time,” Cloutier said. “Base hits are huge. We don’t have any super power hitters, but little base hits can win games like they did today.”
“That was by design,” Smith said of his decision to go to DeCarolis. “All year, we’ve tried to (divide innings) 3-2-2 with our three pitchers. But we stop playing defense at some point in a game. Tonight, it happened to be the fourth inning, and (Tuesday against Lawrence), it was the fifth. It’s one of those things. We’re going to have to keep looking at it.”
Mt. Blue (1-3), which has not had the luxury of an outdoor practice to this point in the spring, got one run back in the fifth when Kasadie Barker led off with a double down the left field line and eventually came around to score, and the Cougars added two runs in the seventh on Macey Phillips’ RBI triple to right-center and Gracie Foss’ RBI infield single.
From there, McGuire slammed the door shut — getting Ashley Wiles looking at a called third strike over the outside corner and getting Lexi Daggett to ground out sharply to shortstop to end it.
“The umpire was giving us six inches outside, so we just kept telling her to pitch there,” Cloutier said of McGuire’s no-walks, four-strikeouts performance. “They weren’t swinging and he was giving them to us, so we kept it there the whole game and it worked out really well.”
“Our M.O. is to hit the ball and play defense, because we’re not going to blow anyone away with our pitching,” Gaslin said. “We have to play some tough defense.”
Travis Barrett — 621-5621
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @TBarrettGWC
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