AUBURN — St. Dominic Academy ran away with its Class D South semifinal softball matchup against Richmond on Saturday.
The second-seeded Saints’ offense came out firing with five runs in the first inning, then pulled away with three more in the fourth and five in the fifth on their way to a 15-5 win over the sixth-seeded Bobcats in six innings.
St. Dom’s (15-1) victory sets up a regional final rematch with top-seeded Searsport (13-5) at the University of Southern Maine on Tuesday at 3:30 pm.
Kathleen Dean pitched all six innings Saturday, striking out nine, walking zero and making multiple nice fielding plays from the circle.
“Hitting my spots was working,” Dean said. “I’ve been working really hard on that with my catcher at practice.”
Dean added: “Making all the plays all around and communicating as a team and making sure we’re picking each other up was also working.”
After Dean retired the Bobcats (10-6) in order in the top of the first, Emily Andrews started things off for the Saints’ offense by scoring from second after Dean struck out but reached first base safely on a passed ball.
Cleanup hitter Bella Perryman then drove in Dean with a double to deep center that nearly cleared the fence.
Four batters later, eighth-grader Sophia Franciose drove in three runners on a hard-hit triple to right field, capping off the Saints’ five-run inning.
“Jumping out in the first inning with a five-spot was very good,” St. Dom’s coach Scott Berube said. “We’ve worked really hard on our offense and running the bases, and all of the girls handled their pressure situations very well.”
The Bobcats responded in the second inning when Jaiden Alexander doubled to left field, bringing in her teammate Autumn Lane to get them on the scoreboard.
The Saints scored another run in the bottom of the second, and Richmond added one run in the third and two more in the fourth to cut St. Dom’s lead to 6-4.
The Saints started to pull away with three more runs in the bottom of the fourth. Dean singled in two runs, and Cami Casserly brought Dean home with another single.
St. Dom’s continued its onslaught with five more runs in the fifth inning. Emily Andrews doubled home Ava Apodaca, then stole third and scored on a throwing error. Dean doubled and scored on Perryman’s single. Casserly, also an eighth-grader, tripled home Perryman then capped the scoring flurry by scoring on a passed ball, pushing the Saints’ lead to 14-5.
“I think today is just giving the team extra out. Just a couple plays that if you make those plays it stops a rally,” Richmond coach Joe Viselli said. “And then the second thing is we didn’t get that timely hit that we needed. A couple times we had bases loaded, one out, three and four hitter up, and just couldn’t quite get that hit. So the game changes like that, and it’s all about execution, and we just didn’t execute today.”
Apodaca hit an RBI single in the bottom of the sixth that scored Fanciose to put the Saints up by 10 runs and put the mercy rule into effect.
Searsport reached the Class D South final by beating Buckfield 5-3 in the other semifinal.
In last year’s regional final, the Vikings defeated the Saints 7-1 and then went on to win the Class D state championship.
The winner of Tuesday’s game will play for the state title Saturday, June 18, at 4 p.m. at the University of Southern Maine.
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