It takes a little luck and the ability to overcome adversity to go far in the state tournament and Bacon Academy had a little of both those qualities on Wednesday.
The Bobcats baseball team got a shock when their number-two starter, Chris Zbin, took one warm-up throw and found out, he couldn't throw. A heat cramp tightened up his left shoulder which gave veteran coach Dave Shea a headache he really didn't need.
Shea did the only thing he could do, he looked in his dugout, saw his grandson, threw him the ball and told him to get out there.
On short notice, the freshman kept Bacon in the game even though he did allow five runs in three innings. That stat has a little deception in it, however, as the Bacon defense failed to rise to the challenge and committed four errors in the first two innings as well.
The saving grace for the Bobcats, their offense. It's one of the best in the area and it came through again as Bacon tied the game in the second and went ahead for good with two more runs in the fourth.
The win sent Bacon back to the Class M quarterfinals where they will play Woodland Regional at East Hartford High School on Saturday. It's familiar territory for the Bobcats, they lost in the state championship game to Montville last season.

It's kind of a bittersweet time especially for high school seniors.
There are a number of them who will be playing their last high school game today and in the coming weeks as the high school athletic year comes to a close with the spring state tournaments.
Today is certainly a busy one with the baseball, softball, track and girls tennis tournaments all getting underway.
In baseball, Matt Harvey pitches what could be his last high school game at Fitch before he goes on to either a pro or college career. The NFA boys play at Norwalk while defending Class M champion, Montville, is home to St. Joseph's. The only game that features two local teams in baseball is Stonington at Ellis Tech.
The track championships also get underway with Class LL in Manchester and Class L in New Britain and girls tennis has both the qualifying and first round matches in the same day.
There are still also a few regular season golf matches left to play and the Eastern Connecticut Conference wraps up it's boys tennis tournament today.
It sounds busy now but by the end of next week, the high school season will have just about come to a close.

I usually pride myself on knowing most of the athletes in this area so when the name Kouta Kobayashi appeared on the list at the 27th annual Woodstock Memorial Day 10K Road Race this morning, I just had to go talk to him.
The 14-year-old from Woodstock finished the 6.2 mile course in 41:31, good enough for seventh place overall. His sister, Maho Kobayashi who is just 16, was the second female to cross the finish line.
Unfortunately for Woodstock Academy, these two runners won't be on any of the Centaurs' running teams. It turns out both attend Whitinsville Christian Academy in Massachusetts.
"Last year, I thought I pretty bad here, so it was quite the improvement," Kouta Kobayashi, a freshman at Whitinsville, said.
"I didn't make it to states but I made it to the Districts (in Massachusetts) in cross country, indoor and outdoor track."
Scott Deslongchamps of Grosvenordale finished first overall in the race for a third straight year. Pomfret School squash and crew coach, Greg Rossolino, placed second overall with another high school runner, 15-year-old Brent Schouler of Northbridge, Mass. in 3rd. The top female runner was Laura Pagnozzi of Scituate, R.I., she finished 11th.

Sorry I didn't get the chance to say this yesterday but you had to like the atmosphere at Griswold High School on Friday night.
A warm night, a good crowd, a great softball game and no rain.
That last part was probably most important as the ECC girls tournament is notorious for that big thunderstorm looming in the distance ready to strike as soon as the game gets underway.
But Mother Nature held no suprises and neither did the game. As expected, a hard fought contest which was one by the first team to take advantage of an opportunity.
Unlike the first meeting between the two when the Wildcats ran by a frustrated Wolverines team 8-3, this game had plenty of excitement but little in the way of controversy. The calls were challenged about as many times as the pitchers, Griswold's Jess Arremony and NFA's Caitlin Eaton, which was little indeed.
The first mistake was the costliest one as an error in the outfield allowed Hilary Schnip to reach and, two outs later, sophomore Caroline Blanchard delivered the game-winning infield single for the NFA win, the third straight title for the Wildcats.
What will next year bring?
Good question.
I suggest you read the girls softball notebook in Monday's Norwich Bulletin as we explore that very question.
Have a safe Memorial Day weekend.

It seems to me that the ECC softball championship is a lot more fun than baseball.
Why?
The softball championship truly is a title game and the games tend to be much closer. That's probably because the best pitchers can pitch.
Take for example the action on Thursday.
St. Bernard, a Small team, took Bacon, a Medium team, to eight innings before losing 2-0. Lyman, a Small team, hung right in there with the Largest of them all before losing to NFA 2-1.
The coaches are into it, the players are into it and they are highly competitive, intense games and it seems to mean a little more.
Baseball coaches tend to look at the ECC tournament as more of a hinderance than a help. You may see Matt Harvey or Rob Bono early but you won't see them in the championship game because it's too close to the start of the state tournament. The championship game tonight will feature Waterford's number three starting pitcher against Fitch's number four. All the players will play, but the emphasis is clearly on what takes place next week not what is happening on the field at ECSU tonight.
That being said, I still think tonight's Waterford-Fitch game is going to be a good one to watch. Not often do you get to see a host of Division I college players-to-be on the same field against one another.
Make your choice, though, because the NFA-Griswold game shapes up to be one of those close, fast, well played softball championship games in Griswold.
Lacrosse fans also get a choice tonight as East Lyme hosts NFA in the ECC girls title match at 5 p.m. and Ledyard in the boys championship at 7 p.m. East Lyme the large favorite in both those games.

You had to feel good for the Norwich Free Academy girls lacrosse team on Tuesday.
The young Wildcats were not exactly given much of a chance against the Stonington Bears in their Eastern Connecticut Conference semifinal in Stonington.
The Bears had already beaten NFA twice, 13-7 and 12-6, and even coach Eric Page knew the task in front of his team was extremely daunting.
Still, when the final horn blew it was NFA that had won the day as they nipped Stonington in overtime 7-6. A celebration worthy of a state championship followed with no one happier that goalie Jessi Owen.
"I think the tournament might be bigger," Owen told me when asked to compare the regular season championship (won by East Lyme) to an ECC tournament championship.
"We've won this five times in a row so this tournament is definitely bigger. We didn't win the conference but we want to win this tournament and we're not going down easy," she added.
That was pretty evident on Tuesday but the tough task lies ahead as NFA tackles East Lyme on Friday on the Vikings home field at 5 p.m.

Let's just hope this isn't the beginning of the Norwich Bulletin front page jinx.
I don't think that will happen to a player like Matt Harvey of Fitch High School but he did suffer his first loss ever in high school baseball Monday night when Plainville beat him 4-1. Why do I get the idea this losing streak won't last long.
Everyone I talked to for the story had glowing reports about Harvey's talent and, more importantly, his make up. All of them spoke of his "baseball pedigree" meaning his father's love and knowledge of the game. He will go beyond that now as he likely will be the first-ever high school player out of Eastern Connecticut to be drafted in the first round by a major league baseball team.
Montville coach Phil Orbe said he remembered seeing Harvey playing in little league and never considered him a phenom, now, he's seen no one better at the high school level.
Plainfield coach John Schiffner, who also manages the Chatham A's in the Cape Cod League, said he may frown upon some going right from high school to the minor leagues but thinks Matt is mature enough to handle the jump.
Now, we'll just have to wait and see what happens on June 7th.

It's going to be a busy week.
The Eastern Connecticut Conference holds just about all of its championships this week with the exception of track which already took place on Saturday.
Monday and Saturday (barring any rain outs) are the only days without any postseason activity. Tuesday marks the beginning of the ECC girls lacrosse tournament with NFA at Stonington and Fitch at East Lyme.
The boys lacrosse tournament begins Wednesday with Fitch at East Lyme and Ledyard at Stonington in the semifinals.
The baseball tournament holds its quarterfinal and semifinal rounds on Wednesday. Waterford is the top seed followed by St. Bernard, Fitch, Lyman, Montville (those two teams could flip-flop four and five seeds depending on results of games from Monday and Tuesday), Killingly, Bacon Academy (two more teams that could flip-flop seeds) and Stonington.
The quarterfinals will be played at Waterford, East Lyme, Ledyard and Stonington at 3:45 p.m., the semifinals at East Lyme and Stonington at 6:45 p.m.
Thursday is the ECC golf championship at the Quinnatisset Country Club in Thompson at 12:30 p.m.
Thursday also has the first two rounds of the softball tournament with top seeded NFA followed by Griswold, Bacon Academy, Waterford, Fitch, St. Bernard, either Plainfield or Lyman and Stonington.
The quarterfinals to take place at East Lyme, Waterford and Griswold, the semifinals at East Lyme and Griswold Thursday night.
Just about everything wraps up on Friday with the girls lacrosse championship at East Lyme at 5 p.m., the baseball title game at ECSU and the softball championship at Griswold at 6:30 p.m.and the boys lacrosse championship at East Lyme at 7 p.m.
Now that's a busy week.

Track meets are always a lot of fun, plenty of things happening, lots of people to talk with, lots of athletes trying their best but, like yesterday at the Eastern Connecticut Conference Championships, no one really seems to know what the score is.
You always hope for the best and expect the worst in these big events as a six hour marathon can grow, as it did on Saturday, to nine hours easily. This time it was a glitch in the scoring system that had things backed up, especially on the track, almost two hours.
The glitch had the timing company, early on in the meet, trying to time things manually. At the same time, results were coming in from other events and nothing was being entered into the computer right away.
At that point, it becomes a guessing game for coaches, reporters and fans alike.
"Who's ahead" was often the question.
"I don't know", often the answer.
The teams eventually guessed correctly as to where they stood and in the end, NFA would reign again in the boys and East Lyme would capture the girls championship. Unfortunately, it was also after 7 p.m. and most of the athletes were already gone. Some schools, like Ledyard, trying to get people home as it was also prom night.

You get the idea that you will be hearing more from these kids.
The Montville High School Indians softball team lost a lot from last season, seven starters to be exact. They may not have been in the thick of the hunt in the Eastern Connecticut Conference Medium Division this season but they are 11-7 and that's pretty impressive.
The Indians have two sophomores, Macy Stefanski and Kelsey Barlow, who are hitting 3-4 in their order and probably could be doing that for many of the ECC clubs. Barlow already has six home runs this season and can put a hurt on the ball.
They are also one of those young clubs that never really gets down on themselves as was shown yesterday when Woodstock came back to score five runs on them. The Indians calmly responded with seven more of their own and walked away with a 17-5 win.
Rachel Rogoff is not a dominant pitcher yet but coach Kara Tiven is doing the right thing, let the young team grow with a young pitcher and let's see what happens in a couple of years.

I was all eager to put down some thoughts about how we over react to things that we can't control at times, such as the weather.
That is, of course, until I looked at this morning's Norwich Bulletin and saw the headlines about the possible tornado that set down in Pomfret.
It was a bright, sunny, albeit a little windy Wednesday afternoon for the most part and here were Athletic Directors making phone calls and cancelling games because of the possible stormy weather.
Remember, a tornado watch, like the one we had yesterday, only means that conditions are favorable for such an event to occur. It doesn't even mean one has occurred.
Some school administrations, however, decided to be a little cautious and postpone most after school activities including interscholastic athletics.
Where I was in Ledyard, that seemed a little premature at the time as the sun was out until about the fourth or fifth inning when grey clouds began to gather to the north and west of the field.
By the time the game ended, those clouds looked ominous but they produced only rain and some continued gusty winds, no lightning, no hail, no tornadoes.
The same could not be said for the northeastern part of the state where a heavy thunderstorm rolled through with a possible tornado in tow. It now seems like it was a very good idea to have postponed the Montville-Woodstock baseball game as it was scheduled for the Bentley Athletic Complex and Bentley can be a large problem when it comes to shelter from a fast moving storm.
Tough call but it seems like they got it right this time.

If there is one thing about the Constitution State Conference, it's expect the unexpected.
The league, which is formed primarily of Tech schools, but now also includes public, private, magnet and charter schools has always been a confusing bunch when it comes to tournaments and league alignments. Most of the reason for that is because schools field programs when they have enough athletes to do so, some teams even disappear in the middle of the season as numbers dwindle.
While it may not be a great place for some programs, such as Parish Hill's softball program, many feel the league serves its purpose. It creates competition for schools and gives them a chance to compete for a title.
There are a couple of programs in the league who might aspire to win a state championship, some who want to do well in the state tournament but most agree that a league title is what they're shooting for.
Has the addition of the the public, private, magnet and charter schools helped the CSC?
Norwich Tech girls basketball and baseball coach Nick Spera thinks it has in the girls competition which was lackluster with just the Tech schools. He, however, feels it has really made no impact when it comes to the boys sports.

I don't think I would have put her name on top of this list coming into the season but Norwich Free Academy's Caitlin Eaton appears to be the front runner now for Player of the Year in softball in Eastern Connecticut.
Eaton hasn't played this well since she burst on the season as a freshman and it's certainly helping the Wildcats as they have climbed to the top of the Eastern Connecticut Conference's Large Divisionwith only one loss thus far.
Eaton came into the season off a troubling back injury that helped limit her to just 21 at-bats last season. Not sure what to expect, NFA coach Jim Cotter limited Eaton a closer role on the mound but wanted to keep her out in the field full time.
That thought quickly ended after games vs. Fitch and Waterford where she shut down both teams when she came into the game. Eaton is NFA's pitcher now and she showed her worth in that capacity again on Tuesday when she limited the Falcons to three hits.
Her bat is also doing plenty of talking as she also leads the area in homers with six and is right up there in doubles and triples as well. It makes it mighty difficult on any pitcher to face the likes of Eaton, Gen Barlow and Gina Facchini, the three hitters who occupy the middle of the NFA lineup.

Some teams just are too good for others.
In the case of East Lyme boys lacrosse, they're just too good for everybody in the Eastern Connecticut Conference.
If there was going to be a challenge, it would have come on Monday at the hands of Norwich Free Academy. The final score, however, was pretty telling, 19-6, in favor of East Lyme.
The Wildcats tried to be patient early but that patience had to be put aside when East Lyme scored three goals in the span of one minute in the first quarter. Add four goals in the second period and an eight goal blitz in the third and the game was pretty much history.
Kevin Raymond and Ryan Doherty form a heckuva 1-2 punch up front and the East Lyme defense didn't let much at all past in the first half.
The problem for the Vikings, NFA is not indicative of what they will meet come state tournament time.
Unlike other sports, the ECC does not prep a team like East Lyme all that well for state tournament play as this side of the state is still a youngster in the sport. That was shown in East Lyme's 12-5 loss to Branford on Saturday.
That meant, despite the easy win yesterday, East Lyme coach Gary Wight still feels his Vikes need to improve before the state tournament begins.

Just a few random observations from the past few weeks of covering high school sports in the local area.

- Sitting in a dugout or two, thanks to our wonderful New England weather, it's kind of funny what kids are talking about. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with what's going on, on the field, anyway. In some cases- is there a game going on?

- I can only imagine what was going through both Jim Cotter and Rick Arremony's minds on Tuesday as they watched their teams throw the ball around the field and watched runners just run the bases almost at will. Cotter, the NFA softball coach, could only say, over and over, that it was a strange game. Arremony, the Griswold coach was laughing afterwards, otherwise, he probably would have been crying as the Wildcats won the game between two of the top teams in the state 8-3.

- Let the players play. There are just too many whistles in girls lacrosse.

- Put a little ball on wet turf and watch it skid, quickly, on by as many NFA and Wheeler boys lacrosse players did on Friday in the rain at NFA.

- If you want to run a quick track and field meet, employ Dave Tetlow and Kyle Griffin from Ledyard. Everybody was singing their praises as they left the Ledyard Relays last Saturday in less than seven hours.

Well, once again, it's over.
Too much over so little?
Not really but maybe a little over the top.
The Putnam situation has been remedied as Dave Austin is back as head coach although the official title is now co-head coach with Athletic Director Chris Coderre. As Coderre told me last night, for all intents and purposes, the program will be under the guidance of Austin with Coderre just adding a helping hand.
No question, there should have been some punishment for Austin's selection of words directed at a player over that player's performance. This is not the world of our fathers and mothers, some things are just not tolerated any longer and Austin did deserve a one or (for consistency's sake due to a similar situation over the winter with boys basketball coach Tony Falzarano) two-game suspension for his choice of words.
Putnam Principal Bill Barry made it a much bigger deal when he either accepted or forced a resignation from Austin and then anointed himself as head coach.
He could have simply suspended Austin for two games, have assistant coach Dennis Walsh pilot the team for those games, let the parents know what happened and be done with it. Would it have leaked out to the press, probably, but it wouldn't have been as much of a show as it was.
There is also the issue of what was said between Austin and Barry in their closed door meeting that prompted the resignation, only the two of them will know as there were no other witnesses.
No excuses here but Bill Barry is still a first-year principal and both he, and Dave Austin, probably have learned some valuable lessons.
Let's hope the rest of the year is a little more tame in Putnam.

One has to wonder if the high school baseball mercy rule was actually a pretty good thing after all.
Maybe I'm only looking at one day but check out some of Monday's scores.
Waterford 37 Wheeler 1
Bacon Academy 23 Woodstock 1
Windham Tech 27 Goodwin Tech 4
Cheney Tech 24 Grasso Tech 2
That's just a sampling of them.
The baseball mercy rule could be modified a bit as, in the one year of its existence, it was a 10-run rule after 4 1/2 innings. Coaches argued that baseball teams could come back from that deficit and win and enough people were against it- that it was scrapped.
How about just follow the softball rule and go with 15 runs after 4 1/2 innings. Face it, when you're down by that much, the bat boy is usually on the mound pitching and every one knows the outcome.
Why prolong the agony?