Furtado lifts Taunton
to softball victory
over Durfee
Tied 1-1 with Durfee High, the Tigers (11-2) managed to retire the side in the seventh even though Kirby walked the first batter and the next batter’s sacrifice bunt moved the runner to second. But Furtado’s parents fretted behind the backstop the entire half inning as their daughter licked her wound between every pitch.
“I guess her thumb didn’t hurt after all,” one observer quipped after Furtado drove in the winning run in the bottom of the seventh to pocket the 2-1 victory.
“She jammed it on a pitch but I block out pain in big situations, I guess,” Furtado said after her shot to the left-center gap scored senior Jess Moitoza from first base. “I’m a patient hitter. I wait for my pitch and when I see it I try to not to miss it and that’s what I did on that one.
“Jess is the fastest girl on our team. I had no worries.”
Kirby couldn’t say she had no worries when Furtado came to the plate; the pitcher never thought her catcher would be the one bailing the team out of a jam after she jammed Furtado’s thumb.
“I felt like the biggest jerk,” said Kirby (11-1), who struck out four, walked three and allowed two hits. “I was standing next to one of our coaches saying she’s not going to be able to grip the bat. I felt so bad. But she pulled through.”
The winning RBI also prevented Taunton, which plays Franklin at 5 p.m. today, from taking the field in extra innings.
“Not having to go out and pitch another inning, it’s ideal to say the least,” Kirby said.
Taunton’s play was scratchy, to say the least, in the opening inning as Durfee’s second runner (Caitlin Carey) reached base on an error before Kirby walked the third batter (Guilia Khoury) and gave up an RBI single to the fourth (Hilary Cabral).
“I just buckled down and focused,” Kirby said of getting back on track after the first inning. “My defense helped out a lot, too. We pulled through hitting. We were knocking on the door and once we started putting it in the holes it started to generate runs. We started getting runners on base.”
Once they rapped the door with their knuckles by getting two hit in the fourth inning after only putting the ball in play one time to that point, the Tigers couldn’t score. With runners on second and third with no outs, senior Jasmyn McCone was called out after her squeeze bunt hit her after it hit the ground. The next two batters were struck out by Khoury, who fanned four batters on the night for Durfee.
“It was a perfect bunt, it was just bad luck,” Taunton assistant coach Heather Sargent said. “We just kept chipping away at it.”
Taunton’s luck more than changed the rest of the way as Caitlyn Walsh’s RBI single in the fifth inning tied the game by bringing Moitoza home.
“It was exciting right to the end,” Sargent said. “Those are the people we want up in that situation. We got kind of lucky getting them up in that situation. They did what they can do. Those are our big hitters and they did their job.”
Nobody came up bigger than Furtado.
“She’s a strong kid, nothing bothers her,” Sargent said. “If she had a broken ankle she’d be playing, too.”
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