BREWER, Maine — The Bucksport High School softball team proved that it didn’t have any easy outs in its lineup on Saturday afternoon.
Sami Goode, Kim Nason and MaKenzie Smith, the Nos. 7, 8 and 9 hitters in the order, combined for eight hits and four runs batted in to highlight a 16-hit attack that led the Bucks to a 9-4 victory over Telstar of Bethel in their state Class C championship game.
Winning pitcher Goode, a senior, had a double and two singles and an RBI; senior first baseman Kim Nason had three singles and a sacrifice fly and two runs batted in, and freshman catcher Smith had two singles and an RBI as Bucksport won its third state C title in four years.
Bucksport wound up 19-1 after winning its 17th straight game.
Telstar finished at 17-3 after having its 11-game winning streak snapped.
The two teams combined for 27 hits as the Rebels put together an 11-hit attack.
But Goode minimized the damage as she allowed just one extra-base hit, Sadie Ellsworth’s seventh-inning triple, and issued only one walk.
She struck out eight and the Bucks played errorless ball behind her.
“I threw pretty well,” said Goode, who will attend the University of Southern Maine in the fall. “I threw a lot of fastballs because they weren’t catching up to it, and I also threw a rise ball because they were dropping their hands. I got stronger as the game went along.”
“She pitched a nice game,” said Telstar coach Jim Lunney. “We hit well enough to compete, but we didn’t defend well enough to compete.”
Telstar took a 2-0 lead with single runs in the first inning on Hayley Peterson’s RBI groundout and in the third on Tehya Johnson’s run-scoring single.
But the Bucks took the lead for good with three runs in the bottom of the third on consecutive two-out RBI singles by Goode, Nason and Smith after Julia Zavalza had walked and Tyler Dupont had singled and they moved up on a groundout.
The Bucks added four in the fourth as they parlayed four costly Telstar errors, run-scoring singles by Dupont and Madysen Robichaud, Nason’s sacrifice fly and a run-scoring grounder by Emily Hunt into a 7-2 lead.
Darian Jellison’s single, Zavalza’s long RBI double to right-center and Dupont’s run-scoring single made it 9-2 in the fifth before Telstar tried to rally with single runs in the sixth and seventh on RBI singles by pinch-hitter Dharma Damon and Johnson, respectively.
But it was too little, too late.
“We just all stepped up today,” said Nason.
“Some of our strongest hitters are at the bottom of the order,” said junior designated player Dupont.
“The top of the order always gets on base and we clear them off [drive them in],” said Goode. “We’re all good hitters. We work together to do our jobs.”
“The bottom of their order really did well,” said Telstar junior pitcher Olivia York. “They have a real strong hitting team.
“I wasn’t horrible, but I didn’t throw my best. I’m disappointed in myself,” said York. “We didn’t play real well.”
“Olivia was a little bit off. She got behind too many batters, but our defense wasn’t there for Olivia today. It just wasn’t our day,” said Lunney.
“[York] was one of the best pitchers we’ve seen, so it took us a while to get used to her,” said Nason. “But were very patient and we focused on the ball.”
Dupont had three singles, her third straight three-hit game, and an RBI for the winners. Zavalza doubled and singled and knocked in a run and Jellison singled twice.
“We work a lot on hitting,” said Bucksport’s Smith. “We’ve been off and on [offensively] this season, but today we all came together and realized what we had to do to win the game.”
“This feels awesome,” said Goode.
“We don’t have any superstars. Nobody is better than you, everybody is helping everyone else out, just like a family. We have a great bunch of kids who want to play ball,” said Bucksport coach Mike Carrier.
Johnson had three singles and two RBIs for Telstar, giving her five hits and six RBIs in her last two playoff games. Becca Howard and Ashley Savage had two singles apiece for the Rebels.