HS softball: Plainfield quietly celebrates win over NFA

It’s never easy for a quality Medium Division team to beat a quality Large Division team in the Eastern Connecticut Conference.
But Plainfield’s motivation on Wednesday coming into its game with Norwich Free Academy was not the David versus Goliath theme.
The bigger concern for the Panthers was that they had lost their last two games; Lyman beat them 4-3 and Stonington delivered them a 5-4 defeat.
More so than the losses, it was how those losses came about.
“The last two games we got walked off on,” Plainfield coach Jim Langlois said with a shake of his head. “Lyman left us on the field and then Stonington did the same thing.”
But rather than sulking, the Panthers wanted to turn the negative into a positive.
“I told them we’re really close, we’re close to teams that people don’t think we can beat,” Langlois said.
NFA probably would have been included in that conversation until recently. The Wildcats have their own share of hard times, including a loss to an ECC Small Division team, Killingly, earlier this week.
“That kind of sent us mixed signals,” Plainfield shortstop Taylor Smith said.
That was because Griswold beat Plainfield, 7-0, yet barely got past the Wildcats in nine innings, 1-0.
Anotherwords, what NFA team would show up?
“You can’t come into any game underestimating a team,” Smith said.
Fortunately for the Panthers, the Wildcats continued to fight their own inner demons, could muster just two hits and lost to Plainfield, 2-0, on Wednesday in Norwich.
“We have to work our way out of this,” NFA coach Bryan Burdick said. “We made only one error (Wednesday), we don’t typically make errors, and it cost us a run. Our bats are colder than ice cold.”
When you’re not hitting, you’re not scoring and that puts pressure on the rest of your game.
“It carries over mentally from one play to the next and therein lies a major problem; when you don’t score, you press in the field, come back in and press at the plate,” Burdick said. “Hitting is a very organic process, it needs to be fluid. When you’re pressing, you’re not hitting.”
And when you’re hitting, you’re having fun.
That’s the side of the coin that Plainfield (9-5) was on Wednesday as it touched NFA pitcher Tess Rubega for four hits in the first three innings. The biggest, however, came in the fifth inning when Smith looped a triple to right field to score Lindsey Lehtonen, who had drawn a two-out walk, and came around herself on an error to give the Panthers the win.
“It’s a great win,” Langlois said and then pointed to his team who was beginning to board the bus for the ride back home. “It’s a big win for the program and, more importantly, it’s a big win for them. We’ve had big wins before, but this is for them, they’re quietly smiling. That’s not a rah-rah team, but they’re going to go home (Wednesday night) and say ‘that’s pretty good.’”