BEVERLY – It was a night to celebrate their seniors as the Fort Frye Cadets played host to the Waterford Wildcats Monday night in the second game of the season between the two but it was a freshman who played the role of hero.
Cadet freshman Madeline Morgenstern’s two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth inning proved to be the game winner as Fort Frye rallied from three runs down late to down the Wildcats 5-4 to sweep the season series between the two cross-river rivals.
Morgenstern’s bomb capped a four-run sixth inning and propelled the Cadets to their 11th win of the season.
“Waterford came out and really had us back on our heels,” said Fort Frye head coach Brian Duskey. “I felt confident that we might get something going there when we turned the lineup over and what a big hit by a freshman.”
Fort Frye jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the first inning thanks to an RBI single by Morgenstern but their bats went quiet for the next four innings against Waterford freshman pitcher Zoey Smithberger.
Smithberger faced the minimum 12 batters from the second inning to the fifth, relying on her defense to retire the Cadets.
While Smithberger was taking care of things in the circle the Wildcat offense scored three times in the top of the third inning off of Fort Frye starting pitcher Christy Willis to take a 3-1 lead.
Smithberger got the inning started with one out when she singled and Maddie Hansell followed with a base on balls.
After a wild pitch moved both runners into scoring position, Smithberger came in to score the tying run on another wild pitch.
The Cadet defense came up with a huge defensive play when left-fielder Jayci Spurr made an outstanding catch on an absolute missile off the bat of MacKaylee Martin for the second out of the inning.
Waterford came through with back-to-back clutch two-out base hits from Gracie Morris and Kaylie McCutcheon to take a 3-1 lead.
Duskey elected to go to junior Elle Casto in the circle to start the fourth inning and she held the Lady ‘Cats in check in the fourth inning before allowing a solo run in the top of the fifth.
Martin led off the fifth with a single and moved to second on a base hit by catcher Shaeli Hayes.
Martin came home to score on another base hit by McCutcheon, her third hit of the game, as the Wildcats added what appeared to be a key insurance run.
After Smithberger allowed a pair of base hits in the opening inning, the only baserunner to reach base over the next four innings did so via a Waterford fielding error.
Things would all change and change in a hurry though in the pivotal bottom of the sixth.
Spurr led off the inning with a double into the gap in left-center field.
Cadet senior Faith Treadway followed with a base hit and moved to second on the play.
Fort Frye second baseman Lexie Handschumacher grounded a single just out of the reach of the Wildcat second baseman scoring a pair of runs and closing the Waterford lead to 4-3.
Smithberger was able to retire Ella Dowler on a sharp grounder to third bringing Morgenstern to the dish for what would turn out to be the biggest at-bat of the game.
Smithberger managed to get a strike up on Morgenstern before she lined the next pitch over the left-center field fence for a two-run home run that turned the one-run deficit the Cadets were facing into a one-run lead.
“That was a big freshman hit by Jayci Spurr to get that inning started and I think we fed off of it,” said Duskey. “Then Madeline (Morgenstern) came up with another huge freshman hit.”
Casto took the mound in the top of the seventh looking to shut down the Wildcats to preserve the win but she would need to retire the 3, 4 and 5 hitters in the Waterford batting order to do so.
After fanning the first batter of the inning, Casto got a huge play from her catcher Maddie Hinton who pounced out from behind the dish on a little nubber off the bat of Martin and fired a strike to first for the second out of the inning.
Casto then got Hayes to ground out to Ella Dowler at shortstop to end the game and allow the Cadets to improve to 11-8 on the season.
Wildcat head coach Curry Ryan was very pleased with his team’s effort despite coming up a run short.
“I’m very proud of the girls and the way they played and approached this game tonight,”said Waterford head coach Curry Ryan. “Zoey (Smithberger) pitched a great game and we were able to get some clutch hits.”
Waterford slipped to 3-17 on the season with the loss but taking the Cadets all the way down to the wire will likely provide a bit of a confidence boost for the Lady Cats.
“That is certainly a game we would like to have but that one inning really did us in,” said Ryan. “We played a pretty clean ballgame against a very good team in Fort Frye and hopefully we can build on that.”
Duskey was thrilled his team was able to pull out the comeback win to celebrate Treadway, Jaden Cox, Hinton and Willis, the four seniors on the Fort Frye team.
“Those four girls provided so much leadership and they are going to be sorely missed,” said Duskey. “You know when you play Waterford they are going to play their best game and they did tonight but we were still able to find a way to get a big win.”
The Cadets will host Shenandoah on Wednesday while Waterford is slated to host Alexander on Tuesday.
