Lesieur No-Hitter, Cerveira Two-Homer Day Lift Mounties

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- It is hard to say who had the bigger day for the Mount Greylock softball team on Monday: senior shortstop Elena Cerveira or freshman pitcher Lily Lesieur.

 

Cerveira went 5-for-5 at the plate with a pair of home runs and four runs batted in.

 

Lesieur? All she did was strike out six in a no-hit, 9-0, win at McCann Tech.

 

Suffice it to say there were plenty of smiles to go around for the Mounties.

 

“I thought Lily pitched with a lot of confidence today,” Mount Greylock coach June Blake said. “And I think her teammates played some good defense behind her.

 

“There were some line drives, some hard-hit balls by them. And we made some plays. I was very happy with that. … Elena made some really nice plays. She picked up that line drive, she had another ground ball across the middle where she made the play and threw the girl out.

 

“Just a great job overall, defensively, by our team.”

 

Cerveira was making a strong case to be the player of the game long before she hit her first home run of the afternoon.

 

In the bottom of the first, she snagged the line drive off the bat of Hailey Miller to end the inning. In the second, she started the inning by fielding a grounder and ended it by grabbing a fly ball. In the fourth, she speared another line drive.

 

And in her first three plate appearances, Cerveira was 3-for-3. She led off the game with a bunt single and eventually scored to give the Mounties a 1-0 lead.

 

In the second, she drove in Sam Trybus to with a single to left to make it 2-0.

 

In the third, she singled again in a two-run inning that saw Taylor Cornell and Alyssa Phelps each drive in a run.

 

Then came the fifth.

 

With two-out, Cerveira took a 1-1 pitch up the middle that eluded McCann’s outfield and got all the way to the fence. Cerveira raced around the bases for an inside-the-park homer to make it 5-0.

 

Jordyn Dodding’s double to right-center sparked a two-run rally in the sixth.

 

And in the seventh, Kat Hoffstedt led off with an infield single, and Cerveira launched a 2-1 pitch over the left field fence to drive in the game’s last two runs.

 

“Every time the ball got thrown to me, whether it was a ball or a strike, I just anticipated the next pitch to be a strike and timed it up based on when she released the ball and when I could hit it,” Cerveira said. “Doing that, definitely helped me see the ball a lot better today.”

 

McCann Tech, which worked four walks off Lesieur, appeared to get a hit in the bottom of the fifth.

 

With a runner on first, Meg Goyette hit a shot toward third base that tipped off the glove of Cornell going to her left. McCann’s scorebook put it down as an error, allowing Lesieur to take the no-hit bid into the sixth.

 

She retired the side in order in the sixth and the seventh to lock up the no-hitter.

 

McCann Tech coach Robin Finnegan said Lesieur earned that accomplishment, but she was disappointed in the way the Hornets (10-3) came out against the non-league foe.

 

“I get disappointed when they don’t show up,” Finnegan said. “Sometimes, we just go through the motions, and that’s what happened today.

 

“I knew this was going to be a tough one. June’s got a great team, a great pitcher. And we just have to rebound. We have Pope Francis tomorrow. We have Lee on Thursday, and then we play a big game on Friday against Smith Academy for first place in the league.”

 

Mount Greylock (10-4) is at Drury on Tuesday.