ConVal softball’s seven-game streak was snapped Friday thanks to a dominant pitching performance from visiting Merrimack Valley, who shut down ConVal’s offense for the first time since early in the year.

After dropping three straight to start the season, ConVal had reeled off seven in a row leading up to Friday’s loss, outscoring opponents 84-15 with four shutouts along the way. 

“Our offense has been the key – that’s what we were missing here today. We found holes, we found gaps in other games that we played, we’ve had a lot of hits in a lot of the games we won, but we weren’t offensively strong today,” said head coach Amanda Hinton after the game. 

Pride senior pitcher Olivia Lacasse held the Cougars to just one hit on 10 strikeouts as MV got revenge for last year’s playoff ouster with a 5-2 win. 

“I thought she pitched really well, but we took her a lot of full counts, we put the ball in play, and their defense made a lot of great plays,” Hinton said.

Pride second baseman CaydenceAllberg was a vacuum up the middle to set the defensive tone for the visiting Valley, as ConVal was able to secure just the one hit, a first-inning triple from senior shortstop Morgan Bemont, who scored on a Kendall Sullivan groundout to put the Cougars up 1-0 early. But ConVal’s Achilles’ heel – player availability – struck them yet again.  

“I think we have a lot of potential, I think we’re working hard, but every game we seem to be missing a key player,” Hinton said.

On Friday, that player was starting second baseman Olivia Riley, and without her holding down second, the Cougars made three errors in two at-bats in the second inning to give MV the lead for good. 

“I’m hoping for the rest of the season against our really good opponents, we’ll have our whole team here, because I feel like we can really beat anybody with our full team,” Hinton said. 

Senior pitcher Lily Mandel did her part, allowing nine hits, but the Pride strung three of them together in the third, culminating in a two-run double from Kaylee Keyser that put the game out of reach. As Sullivan is still recovering from offseason elbow injury and easing her way back into pitching, Mandel has handled almost all of ConVal’s pitching this spring, and she has been strong. 

“She pitched a fantastic game today,” Hinton said. “I’m really proud of Lily. She’s been doing phenomenal. After those errors we had in the field, she stays strong, she helps her teammates, she rallies around them as well and does her job.”

The Cougars were able to scrape together one more run when senior center fielder Sam Henderson reached on an error and scored on an RBI fielder’s choice off Bemont’s bat to create the 5-2 final. 

“I don’t think we played badly,” Hinton said. “I think there was one inning where we made a couple errors and that was all they needed to jump ahead of us. We struggled to hit today – most of the time you need more than one hit to score a lot of runs.”

ConVal (7-4) welcomes Lebanon to town Monday after beating the Raiders 20-0 earlier in the season. The Cougars have Milford at home Wednesday. 

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