By RICK SPRUNGER
CONVERSE — Norwell needed a total team effort to win the Class 3A softball sectional Thursday night.
And a total team effort is what coach Kevin Baird got as Norwell breezed to a surprisingly easy 12-4 win over a good Bellmont team that had already beaten it once by a 12-2 score.
“First of all, Bellmont is a really great team,” said Baird after the game, tipping his cap to the other side. “We just really wanted this one. We have a young team, and I told them before the game that you just gotta believe. Good teams are going to punch you,” he continued, referring to that earlier one-sided loss to the Braves. “You’ve gotta punch back. And we had a lot of girls really step up tonight.”
Start with the offense.
Norwell banged out 13 hits off two Bellmont pitchers, including three each by Nevada Lenwell and Reese Frauhiger and a home run by Makayla Young.
Lenwell’s two-run single in the second inning staked the Knights to an early 2-0 lead. Another two-run base knock in the third gave her team the lead for good at 4-3, and she led off the fifth with another base hit to start a four-run inning that put the game away.
“She has been really hot,” said Baird of his senior first baseman. “She’s had five hits in her last two games. She’s got really good discipline at the plate, and she takes a lot of pitches.”
Frauhiger singled and scored in Norwell’s three-run third-inning uprising and drove in one run with a hit in the fourth and two more with a big two-out single an inning later.
“That last hit gave us the two insurance runs we needed,” said Baird.
And then there was Young, who came to bat with a runner on base in the fifth and promptly smacked the first pitch she saw from Bella Ashley well over the fence in straightaway center field.
“She’s a sophomore, and this is her first year on the varsity,” said Baird, “and this was her second career home run. Her first was last night.”
Meanwhile, Sami Lemler was handcuffing the Bellmont offense.
She scattered six Bellmont hits while striking out seven batters and stranding eight baserunners.
Two of Bellmont’s four runs were unearned.
“She really wanted the ball tonight,” said Baird. “She pitched the first game against Bellmont, and it wasn’t her best game. But she said, ‘I want this game.’ That’s just great senior leadership.”
But, as if Lemler’s pitching wasn’t enough to get the job done, she got great support from the defense behind her.
Particularly noteworthy were a sparkling double play turned by the infield on a sacrifice bunt in the fifth and two running catches in center field by Jordan Markley.
The double play came with Norwell leading, 8-3, and Bellmont trying to get something started.
Taylor Bauer led off the inning with a single, and Ashley sacrificed her to second.
Bauer tried to steal an extra base on the throw to first, but Lenwell gunned her down with a bullet throw to Leah Werling at third base.
The play proved to be pivotal when the next batter, Sami Christen, socked a home run over the center field fence that counted for one run, not two.
“We work on that play every day,” beamed Baird later of the first-to-third relay on a bunt. “It’s not going to come up that often, but we work on it every single day. This is the second time we’ve used it this year.”
Markley’s two great grabs in center field were both off the bat of Bellmont leadoff hitter Emily Bleke, who homered over Markley’s head in the third inning.
The first of Markley’s two catches came with Bleke leading off the fourth and saw the speedy center fielder range far to her left in the right-center field gap.
The second found her racing even farther to her right to rob Bleke of extra bases leading off the sixth.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid as fast as she is,” praised her coach. “She must have covered seventy or eighty feet on that second one. You just don’t see someone that fast very often.”
After Norwell jumped out to that early 2-0 lead, Bellmont came right back with three runs in the top of the third on Bleke’s leadoff home run, a walk, an error, and back-to-back singles by Ashley and Christen to take a short-lived 3-2 lead.
But after that, it was all Norwell.
The first of Lenwell’s three hits came in the bottom of the frame with the bases loaded.
She was credited with two runs batted in on the play. But all three runners scored when the ball scooted between the legs of the left fielder and rolled all the way to the fence on the turf.
Markley then started the Bellmont fourth with the first of her two big catches, and Lemler fanned the next two hitters to slam the door.
Norwell plated three more in the fourth on singles by Young and Frauhiger sandwiched around a walk to Addison Keller and followed by a sacrifice fly to deep right field by Kaydance Clark.
The Knights got their last four runs in the fifth on Lenwell’s third hit of the game, Young’s homer, and then Markley’s second hit of the contest, a double by Kara Brown, and Frauhiger’s two-run single.
Norwell improved to 17-7 with the win and will advance to regional play next week.
Bellmont wrapped up its season at 15-8.
