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JERREY ROBERTS

Chelsea Brown of South Hadley pitches to Greenfield on Friday. Greenfield won 6-1.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Kelsey Garvey, right, of South Hadley reaches for a throw to first during an attempted pickoff of Meaghan Andrews of Greenfield. She was safe. Greenfield won 6-1.

SOUTH HADLEY - The South Hadley softball team just needed to beat Greenfield Friday afternoon to qualify for the playoffs.

But the Tigers could not solve Green Wave starting pitcher Taylor Lively and lost 6-1 in South Hadley.

"We have a really tough schedule coming ahead. We play all Division 1 schools and nothing gets easier," Tigers coach Fred Roach said, "This was not one of our better games. We played better (Thursday). I told the kids that if we would have played half as well as we played yesterday, we would have probably won this game, but unfortunately we didn't."

South Hadley (1-8) lost 9-7 on Thursday to Agawam, a Division 1 opponent.

Because the Tigers play at least 70 percent of their games against Division 1 teams, they would have qualified for the Western Massachusetts Division 2 Tournament by winning either of their games against Division 2 opponents. However, South hadley lost both those contests, including Friday's against the Green Wave (4-2).

Now the Tigers must finish with at lest a .500 overall record to make the playoffs.

"This would have been nice to win today to take a little pressure off," Roach said.

Greenfield took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first after Olivia Hickey led off with an infield single. She moved to second on a passed ball, to third on a ground out by Lively and scored on a fielder's choice ground ball hit by Meghan McHugh who reached first. McHugh eventually scored on a single by Meaghan Andrews.

The Green Wave scored two more runs in the second, one on an RBI fielder's choice by Hickey, followed by an RBI single by Lively.

Greenfield pushed the lead to 5-0 in the top of the fourth inning, when Chloe Pierzchala reached on an error by Brittany Tabin at second base, and scored on a misplay at third base by Kate Paleologopoulas.

The Tigers finally got to Lively in the sixth inning. Leah Spring led off with a bunt single that snuck past Ainslee Penfield at third base. Spring advanced to second on consecutive sacrifice bunts by Tabin and Chelsea Brown. Melissa Oslin plated Spring with a double to left-center to make the score 5-1.

"My bright spot is Melissa Oslin," Roach said, "She is legitimately hitting well over .400, so I am really happy with her."

Oslin led the Tigers going 2-for-3 with an RBI double, while Brown and Spring each finished 1-for-3.

The Green Wave scored once more in the seventh, after Penfield rocketed an RBI triple to left-center that scored McHugh from first.

Brown took the loss for South Hadley, allowing 12 hits and four walks with three strikeouts in seven innings.

Lively allowed the one run on four hits and 10 strikeouts in the complete-game win.

"I don't think that is how we usually play, I think we could have won that game," Brown said, "We are just going to have to get a little more confidence and pull together to see what we can do."

South Hadley will look to bounce back at 3:30 p.m. Monday at Westfield.

"I do believe that we can do well in our league once league play rolls around," Roach said, "I am pretty optimistic about the future and for the team getting where we want to go."