Hawks Soar, Win Tournament

The Newtown Hawks 10U girls’ softball team won the PONY qualifier at Yale University as the Hawks captured the Yale Tournament championship this past weekend.

After a slow start in pool play on Saturday, the Hawks came back strong in Sunday’s elimination round en route to three wins and the title.

In the first game, the Hawks defeated The Wicked 14-4 in four innings. Katie Laaksonen had a triple, Lauren Wilcox a double and a single and Caitlyn Linden, Haley Ryan, Madeline Meier, Katie Reilly, Kelly Merrick and Sydney DiMartino each had singles to lead the Hawks’ offensive charge. Lauren Wilcox got the win and had nine strikeouts. 

The Hawks then faced the CT Eliminators, a strong team that has beaten the Newtown in three meetings during the past two years.  The Hawks prevailed 5-2 behind the battery of Wilcox who accumulated seven more strikeouts and catcher Laaksonen who threw out two would-be base stealers.

Newtown jumped on the board in the second inning as Wilcox received a walk and then stole her way around the bases.  Adding to the run total in the third inning, Linden and Laaksonen were both walked and later scored on a fielder’s choice by Meier and single by Reilly. The Eliminators answered with a couple of runs of their own after the first two players got on base with walks and later scored on ground ball outs.  The Hawks increased their lead in the fourth inning with a leadoff walk by DiMartino who scored on Ryan’s double. Ryan scored the fifth and final run by stealing third and crossing home plate on a wild pitch.  

In the championship game, Newtown again beat the Eliminators, this time 9-7. The Eliminators made this one tough as they jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first.  Newtown answered with six runs of its own with a leadoff single by Ryan, five walks, a fielder’s choice RBI by Meier and a timely single by Merrick. The Eliminators came back with three more runs in the second inning and two more in the third to take a 7-6 lead. The never-say-die attitude and the bats of Newtown brought the team back into the lead in the bottom of the third. A single by Meier and walk to Merrick lead to another fielder’s choice RBI, this time by Jacklin Gouveia. Ryan’s RBI single put the Hawks up by one halfway through the game. An insurance run was added in the fourth as Caitlyn Linden singled and worked her way around the bases on wild pitches and steals, eventually getting home on a wild pitch. The Hawks played excellent defense in the final game as both Merrick and Ryan had two put-outs in the infield and Linden made a great play on a short hop to end the game. Wilcox tallied nine strikeouts for a total of 25 over 16 innings of play. 

The Hawks are 4-0 in Fairfield County League play and will be defend their CT Babe Ruth State Championship the weekend of July 17-19 in Southbury.