Softball: Hampshire Regional hammers Westfield, improves to 5-1 overall

WESTHAMPTON — The Hampshire Regional softball team dominated Westfield in a 13-1 victory in six innings on Thursday night.

The two teams matched up earlier in the year in what was the first game of the season, with the Raiders again walking away with a mercy-rule victory, winning 14-0 in five innings.

“These guys all kind of know each other, so they kind of make it a rivalry,” Hampshire head coach Brian McGan said. “[The Bombers are] a well-played team. They train well, they practice hard, they know what they’re doing as far as that.”

Offense came in waves for the Raiders on Thursday, scoring all 13 runs across just three innings, where the team rallied with consistent hits at the plate.

Hampshire finished the night with a seven-run bottom of the sixth inning, with the game eventually being called early after a makeshift walkoff two-RBI single off the bat of Taylor St. Pierre.

At the conclusion of the sixth inning, the Raiders tallied 18 hits as a team, with nine different players in the hit column. Seven of the nine finished with multiple hits in the win.

“I made some changes to try to sort of spark the team a little bit,” McGan said. “Some of the kids on the bench, I felt, maybe could do something swinging the bat, and seemed to work out for us.”

Lucy Trombley and Chelsea Vanasse each tallied three hits on the night, with Trombley adding on a pair of RBIs and a run scored, while Vanasse came around to score twice and drove in one run.

Hampshire consistently found ways to find the holes in the Westfield defense, with Caroline Payson’s double in the fifth inning and Vanasse’s double in the sixth being the squad’s only extra-base hits.

Ryanne Dubay got the start in the circle for the Raiders in the win, throwing all six innings and allowing one earned run on five hits and four walks with a strikeout.

The junior found herself in some trouble in her final two innings, working out of a bases-loaded jam with no outs in the fifth, and allowing just one run in a tough sixth inning.

“[Dubay] hit most of her spots,” McGan said. “She had a couple of rough innings. But when she pitches her spot, she’s a good pitcher. You can’t stay in the middle of the plate. Try to go in and out, up and down. And for the most part, she did that pretty well.”

Thursday night’s substantial victory for Hampshire didn’t come without some blemishes along the way, with a few gaffs on the basepaths and defending in the field despite finishing with zero errors.

Six games into the season, McGan expects a level of polish from his group. After coming up short of a state championship again last year, he knows what his team needs to look like to get over the hump.

“We made a lot of mistakes [on Thursday],” McGan said. “… When you don’t make the X’s and O’s, you don’t execute. It turns into [me] not pleased about the way we played.”

Despite having a few areas to work on, Thursday night’s performance still counts toward the win column. The Raiders now sit at 5-1 on the year, taking the field again on Saturday, April 18, at 1 p.m. on the road against Wachusett.

“We just never want to be a team that just gets through the season. You want to be a team that competes, and that’s all I look for them to do: to compete,” McGan said.