MADISON — Kailey Roberts’ body language told the complete story Thursday afternoon at Colin Campbell Field.

Roberts slowly trudged back out to the center of the circle for the bottom of the second inning, the Hall-Dale sophomore pitcher still reeling from an unrelenting attack she’d faced in the first — an eight-run onslaught highlighted by not one, but two Ashley Emery inside-the-park home runs as top-seeded Madison Area Memorial High School jumped out fast and then rolled to a 14-6 victory in a Class C South softball quarterfinal.

Madison (16-1), the Mountain Valley Conference champion, will meet Lisbon in the regional semifinals at 1 p.m. Saturday.

A game that took 1:41 to play was over much, much sooner than that. After Hall-Dale (8-9) got the jump with a single run in the top of the first on three hits, including an RBI single from junior Jill Whynot (3 for 4), Emery singlehandedly provided a quick and immediate response. She led off the inning by drilling a 2-2 pitch into right field, and the speedy junior catcher’s legs never stopped whirling as the ball skipped to the fence. She raced around to tie the score at 1-1 before Hall-Dale even had a chance to revel in taking an early lead.

Emery was far from finished.

The 10th of 11 players to bat for Madison in the inning, she came up for a second time with two runners on and ripped a second home run to a virtually identical spot in right-center field to make it 8-1. If there had been an element of surprise involved in her first roundtripper, Emery had no such favor the second time — though she beat the throw home just as easily.

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“I’m just trying to go as fast as I can,” Emery said. “I saw coach just keep winding his arm, so I knew I was going home.”

These were far from your garden variety, Fenway Park-type inside-the-park jobs — the kind where the ball ricochets awkwardly in a tricky, antiquated corner of the ballpark. Instead, these were races won by Emery, who had home run on her mind each time she saw the ball shoot into the gap between the outfielders.

“I don’t know what else I can say about Ashley and her speed,” Madison coach Chris LeBlanc said. “If they’re going to play her one way, she’s going to find the gap and she’s going to go. That was evident (Thursday).

“Once it gets by them you better have an outfielder that can cover some ground, because the whole time they’re chasing (the ball), she’s running around the bases.”

In between Emery’s homers, Roberts recovered from a walk to No. 2 hitter Whitney Bess to retire the next two batters in order. Madison answered by rapping out four straight hits and scoring four more runs prior to Emery’s second blast.

So, by the time Roberts came back out for the second inning, she could be forgiven for feeling a little shell-shocked.

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“I wanted them to know that we were still there,” Emery said of Hall-Dale taking a 1-0 lead. “I felt like we were ready for this game. And it’s good that we won by (eight runs), because we wanted to make an impression.”

Emery, who led Madison with a .610 batting average during the regular season, finished with a 3 for 4 day that included the two homers, four RBIs, three runs scored and a stolen base.

Madison added two more runs in the second and third innings. In the second, freshman Lauria LeBlanc (3 for 4 with two doubles) dropped a bloop double down the right field line to drive in her second run of the day, while Bess and Madeline Wood each collected sacrifice flies in the third.

“Some people have been in a slump, and we’ve been really working in practice to get out of that,” LeBlanc said. “We try to be up in the dugout and cheering everybody on.”

Hall-Dale tried to chip away in the middle innings with three runs in the fourth and two more in the sixth to cut its deficit to 12-6, but LeBlanc’s third RBI of the day followed Emily Edgerly’s RBI triple in the sixth to put things out of reach.

“They’re a strong hitting team, one through 10,” Hall-Dale coach Steve Acedo said. “They all make contact. It’s tough to work around anybody.”

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For Hall-Dale, the Bulldogs followed their best game of the year — a preliminary round win over Traip on Tuesday — with some sloppy play against Madison. Still, Acedo said, for a team with only senior starter, he loved his team’s resolve.

“If we had played the defense today like we did the other day, it would have been a lot tighter game,” Acedo said. “They’re the best team in our conference for a reason. They’re motivated to play.”

Travis Barrett — 621-5621

tbarrett@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TBarrettGWC


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