BEVERLY — Elsa Reulet didn’t have to look up to see if her blast in the bottom of the seventh inning cleared the fence at Beverly High’s softball field. The junior knew just from the moment the ball met her bat.
“You know when you can just feel it coming off the bat? That’s what it was like,” said the 17-year-old Reulet, whose 2-run blast over the left-centerfield fence capped off a wild 5-run inning to give the host Panthers a dramatic 7-5 victory over rival Danvers on a cold, gray afternoon.
“I wasn’t thinking about all those little things that can get in your head. I just watched the ball, focused on my swing and wanted to use all my power,” added Reulet.
Freshman pitcher Lidia Miedema, who threw a complete game eight-hitter with nine strikeouts to earn the win, had tied the game two batters before Reulet before blasting her first ever home run over the fence in left.
“It was my first-ever over the fence homer, so I was really excited,” said Miedema. “I just believed in myself and said ‘I got this’.”
The Panthers had lost seven of their last eight games against their Northeastern Conference rivals, but thanks to the long ball were able to end that streak.
“The game has changed where a lot of kids can hit it out now, and I love that. But sometimes the kids put too much pressure on themselves to hit them,” said Beverly head coach Megan Sudak. “So I said let’s just get some hits and get going with baserunners. We’re certainly capable of hitting home runs, but we don’t want to rely on them, either.”
Beverly (now 4-0) trailed 5-2 heading into the home half of the seventh. Danvers’ Skyla Coakley had scattered seven hits and struck out eight heading into the final frame before Panther freshman Sophia Balducci led off the frame with a sharp single to center. Falcons head coach opted to go to the bullpen, bringing in offspeed specialist Alli McGinnity.
Jasmine Felicano hit a sharp single to the hole at shortstop, and both she and moved up a base on a throwing error. Balducci then scored on a passed ball, making it 5-3. An RBI groundout by Gabbi Wickeri cut the Panthers’ deficit to one before the 15-year-old Meidema drilled a solo shot to tie things up.
Athena McKenna followed with another single to left field before Reulet went deep for the unlikely walkoff win.
“It was a great comeback,” said Reulet. “There was a lot of cheering and pulling for each other on the bench that whole inning. The energy was there.”
Danvers never trailed until the game’s final pitch.
“Skyla did a great job, but we knew she was getting tired and we didn’t want to leave her out there at that point with another great pitcher (McGinnity) we could turn to,” Danvers head coach Mark Veilleux said. “Give Beverly all the credit, though; they hit the ball well when they had to. Both of those homers were well hit.”
Making her first varsity start on the mound after two early relief appearances, Miedema was sharp in allowing just one earned run and two walks. Eighty-four of her 122 pitches went for strikes, and her changeup was working nicely.
“She threw a fantastic game,” said Sudak. “Both she and Skyla did.”
Senior lefthanded slugger Ava Gray, the Falcons’ catcher, scored on Addi McCarty’s RBI single to give the visitors a 1-0 lead after one inning. They added two more in the third when both freshman Kyla Moroney (2 hits, 2 runs scored) and Lila Flynn came home after an infield error. Beverly got one back on Meredith Johnston’s RBI single in the bottom of the frame.
In the fifth, Coakley’s two-out double scored Moroney to make it 4-1. Miedema run-scoring single plated Jasmine Feliciano to again cut Beverly’s deficit to two, but Danvers added what appeared to be an insurance run in the top of the seventh when McCarty (2 hits) scored on a wild pitch.
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