Softball Suffers Two Tough Losses at Big East Tourney

Exeter softball played both Worcester Academy and Nobles and Greenough School this weekend in the Big East Tournament at Phillips Academy Andover. The girls lost 0-1 in both games.

An odd feature of the Andover playing field was the lack of an outfield fence, which eliminated ground rule doubles, caroms off the wall and out of the park home runs.

Unfortunately for Big Red, with a fence, lower Azniv Nalbandian would have hit two home runs during the game against Nobles. Because all balls, no matter how far they were hit, were still considered to be in play, fielders were able to reach Nalbandian’s longest hits in time to get her on the relay home.

"Somehow the outfielder threw the ball to home plate just in time for me to be out," Nalbandian said. "They were a good team, and they were ready to greet me at home."

Despite the two outs at home plate, Nalbandian put up a strong showing in the games. "Az also hit a bomb to left field [against Nobles]," prep Allegra Grant said. "That really got us going."

Exeter’s misfortune continued; after the lack of a fence robbed the team of two home runs, their game against Nobles came down to a disputed call in the last inning. "The ump called Hannah [Myers] out on third base when she was definitely safe. That killed us," Nalbandian said.

"We could see that he regretted it right after he called," Knox said. "But he couldn’t take it back because the other umpire on home hadn’t seen anything."

In Exeter’s second game of the day against Worcester, the girls lost in the ninth after a tight game and two extra innings.

Big Red consistently got the bat on the ball, but many of the hits were instantly fielded. "It was ridiculous how many pop-ups we had," Nalbandian said. "I think we could have beaten them."

"Some of the calls also didn’t go our way," Grant added.

The girls will be encouraged at their performance and grit, seeing how just a few bad breaks prevented them from advancing further in the tournament. They are now looking forward to their final games of the season against Andover this Saturday at home.