PHOTO BY BOB ROCHE
Holland tournament MVP Mia Nowicki and Katie Terban celebrate the win.
By STEVE KRAUSE
LYNN — If there were any doubt that St. Mary’s Mia Nowicki is a special high school softball pitcher, the 2016 John Holland Memorial Softball Tournament may end up being her official coming-out party.
Nowicki, a junior, was tremendous Saturday and Sunday. The Chelsea resident struck out 23 batters over two days, leading the Spartans to the championship, and was named the tournament’s MVP. It took the Spartans nine innings to defeat Classical, 6-4, Sunday — a day after eking out a taut 1-0 thriller over Swampscott in the preliminary.
“It’s nice to have her at the end of games, because other teams just can’t believe it when they see her,” said coach Paige Licata. “They know about her, but then when they see her it’s something else.”
Nowicki fanned 15 Swampscott hitters Saturday night, out-dueling the Big Blue’s Hannah Leahy, who struck out nine and was also named to the all-tournament team. The game’s only run game when Katie Terban, who was also named to the all-tournament team, doubled home Frankie Simon, who had walked, in the sixth inning. Nowicki finished the preliminary with a flourish, striking out the final two Big Blue batters, one swinging and one called, with a runner on second.
Sunday, St. Mary’s Michaela Hamill and Classical’s Tori Adams matched wits for the first part of the game. Nowicki took over for the Spartans in the fifth, but Adams pitched every inning of both games. It was 4-4 after seven innings, and Nowicki made sure it stayed that way. Adams, however, seemed to get stronger as the game progressed. She even breezed through the first two batters in the ninth before St. Mary’s finally got to her.
With two out, Simon doubled to left-center. Vanessa VanBuskirk followed by lacing a triple to right-center that brought home Simon with the go-ahead run. Terban’s single scored VanBuskirk to make it 6-4.
“I’m so glad,” said Licata, “that it was our seniors who carried the day. Frankie, Vanessa and Katie all had big two-out hits and Hamill did a great job on the mount. If we don’t have Michaela, we don’t have a fresh Mia to finish the game today.”
Classical, which had to hang on for dear life to beat English, 7-6, in Saturday’s preliminary, went down in order in the bottom of the ninth, with Nowicki fanning two.
“It’s hard to face (Nowicki) when you only see her once around the batting order,” said Classical coach Erica Richard.
Adams and catcher Meg Leavitt were Classical’s representatives on the all-tournament team.
“When (Tori) is on, and she gets ahead of the hitters, the way she was doing today, she’s tough,” Richard said. “If she pitches the way she did today, it bodes well for the post-season.”
Leavitt knocked in three of Classical’s four runs, including the game-tying run in the fifth inning on a bunt that just eluded the dive of her counterpart, Emily Stephenson.
“She has, at times, carried this team on her back this year,” said Richard, noting that two of the players she’d projected as starters — Shannon Magner and Ally Dunnigan — suffered knee injuries in the off-season. Dunnigan was able to come back as the team’s designated player, but Magner missed both the winter and the spring with her torn ACL.
“This is such an awesome tournament,” said Richard. “The kids put as much heart and soul into this tournament as they do the regular state tournament.”
For St. Mary’s, Hamill and Tori DiCenso knocked in two runs each, and Terban knocked in a run and scored one.
Saturday night, Classical led English 7-1 going into the seventh inning, but the Bulldogs would not go away quietly. They’d given the Rams all they could handle last Monday, and did it again. English just kept pounding out hits in the seventh, with RBI from Sarah Tobin, Lindsay Lannon, Emma Trahant and two by Rachel Calnan.
Swampscott defeated the Bulldogs in the consolation game, 11-3, with the big blow coming off the bat of Maisie Vazquez, who hit a towering three-run homer that cleared the bleachers outside the left-field fence.
The all-tournament team consisted of VanBuskirk and Terban from St. Mary’s, with Nowicki as the MVP: Adams and Leavitt from Classical; Tobin and Jill Bowden from English; and Leahy and Vazquez from Swampscott.