PITTSFIELD, Mass. – The Berkshire Force 12-and-under travel softball team Sunday rallied for five runs in the top of the sixth inning but could not eclipse the Stamford, Conn., Stars in a 14-8 game to decide the championship of the Babe Ruth New England Regional.

 

Stamford took advantage of eight Force errors and pulled away late with five runs in the fourth inning and two more in the fifth to secure the regional title.

 

Both teams qualified for the July’s Babe Ruth World Series, though.

 

The Stars previously qualified for the national tournament with a tourney win in Londonderry, N.H., in May, leaving one open bid for this weekend’s tournament at the Doyle Complex.

 

The Force, which won on Saturday afternoon over Windham, N.H., to survive the loser’s bracket and get a rematch with the Stars, took the bid to go to Alabama for the July 23-Aug. 1 World Series as the weekend’s runner-up.

 

Early on, it looked like the home team would take care of business against Stamford and force an “if necessary” game to decide the regional championship against the winners’ bracket winner.

 

The Force scored three runs on just one hit in the top of the first.

 

Addison Farkas and Cassidy Flynn each drew a walk ahead of Gianna Moses’ one-out single to plate Farkas. Flynn and Moses then came home when Lexi Witherell grounded to the left side for an RBI and an Stamord error let Moses come home from second on the play.

 

Stamford answered back right away with three in the bottom of the first, taking advantage of three Force errors in the inning.

 

“I’m not gonna make excuses, but playing three games yesterday and [Stamford] only played one, it’s tough on our girls,” Force coach Mike Lodowski said. “I know it’s softball. It’s not football. But it still beats them up.”

 

Because Stamford went 2-0 in pool play on Friday, it needed to win just once on Saturday afternoon to reach Sunday’s final round. Berkshire ended up playing three times on Saturday and once on Sunday – a total of four games in about 26 hours.

 

“Our first games [of the day] are always tough,” Lodowski said. “Our first innings are always tough. These guys jump on it, and we’ve always had trouble waking up for some reason. Especially home tournaments, where we can’t put our girls to bed early – when we go away, we put ‘em to bed early. When we’re home, I can’t regulate what time they go to bed or if they’re in their pool at night.”

 

Stamford took the lead in the bottom of the third with four runs – two unearned – in an inning that featured a two-run double by Madison McGrath (2-for-3, four RBIs).

 

Force pitchers Cassidy Flynn and Olivia Archambault split time in the circle, combining to allow eight earned runs between them.

 

Flynn got the start and moved to short when Lodowski made the change to Archambault between the third and fourth innings.

 

“Liv, it came up at the last minute that her wrist was hurting her,” he said. “We still wanted to pitch her, though. We wanted to see a different change. She’s got the mixed bags of curve balls and a little bit of drops. I don’t know if we were getting the calls on drops, but she was throwing them.”

 

Stamford used two hits, three walks and a hit batter to open up a 12-3 lead before adding a pair in the fifth to put the Force in a 14-3 hole.

 

Down to its last at-bat with a regional title on the line, Berkshire put together its best offensive inning in three tries against the Stars this weekend.

 

Flynn got things started by reaching on an error, and Moses and Witherell followed with singles to make it 14-4 and put runners at the corners.

 

After Stamford’s Kate Dettmer got a strikeout, Tori Blanchard blasted a double to center field to score Moses and Whitherell, get the deficit down to eight runs and fire up the Force and its crowd.

 

Daisy Caron then singled and moved up on a throw to third to put two runners in scoring position with one out.

 

Dettmer got a strikeout looking. But Kaylana Altman reached on a two-base outfield error that allowed both Blanchard and Caron to come home to make it 14-8.

 

Berkshire’s comeback hopes then were dashed when Dettmer got out of the inning and the game with a groundball out to secure the championship.

 

Lodowski said the regional tournament, which also featured play in 8U and 10U brackets, will pay dividends for his players, in terms of the competition they saw, and for the sport in Berkshire County in general.

 

“We’d love to see more girls playing softball,” he said after the Force’s Friday tournament opener. “I have a daughter who plays in college, and she came through the Force program. We want to see girls develop and play and excel in the sport. It’s a great sport. It’s the No. 4 most-watched sport on television when they play the College World Series.

 

“We want more girls to get into softball. We have a really big rec ball league. We need more girls to come out and play. I think now that the COVID thing is over, our 10U organization has got a ton of teams, and they’re starting to filter up. Whereas our 12s, 14s and 16s are still a little bit thin. Maybe that’s the COVID effect. … We’re going to be really good again like we were maybe six, seven years ago.”

 

In the near term, this year’s edition of the Berkshire Force 12U faces the challenge of raising funds to offset the cost to families of sending the team to Florence, Ala., site of the World Series. Team manager Jessica Faille Sunday said that anyone interested in helping to sponsor the trip can contact the club at berkshireforce12U@yahoo.com.