Darien Softball Slips Past Ludlowe for First Conference Championship

All season, Nicole Buch has been the table-setter at the top of the lineup, so it was only appropriate that she scored what might be considered the biggest run in Darien softball history.

Buch raced home to score the winning run on a foul popup, as Blue Wave edged Fairfield Ludlowe 4-3 Friday afternoon to claim the school's first FCIAC softball championship.

With the bases loaded and no outs, the Ludlowe infield was forced to play in. Falcons third baseman Brenna Martini backtracked to make the catch on Courtney Bell's popup. As she made the grab, however, her momentum caused her to fall, and she could not get up to make a throw.

"I was definitely tagging," said Buch, who was named the tournament MVP after going 3-for-4 with two runs scored and an RBI. "I was going to at least draw a throw until I saw her fall down. Then I just made a break for it."

The second-seeded Blue Wave improved to 20-3, turning back a tough challenge from the eighth-seeded Falcons (14-9), who upset top seed Westhill and No. 5 Danbury to get to the final.

With the middle of the Darien lineup coming up, Ludlowe coach Tony Samuelian said he couldn't fault Martini for making the play. But if he had to do it over, he said would have prefered that shortstop Emily Nelson catch the ball to give her better angle to the plate.

Still, this was a far cry from the teams' regular-season meeting, in which Darien crushed Ludlowe, 14-3.

"It could have been very easy for us to be intimidated by them," Samuelian said. "We got whopped the first time by them. It wasn't even a game. This time around, they knew we were here. I don't think anybody who watched the game could think that we didn't belong here."

Jessica DeMaio earned the win by pitching out of a pair of bases-loaded jams, including one in the top of the  seventh when the contest was on the line.

"She wasn't as crisp as she was [Thursday night, but she showed heart today," Darien coach Nick DeMaio said. "She didn't have her best stuff. She didn't have as much movement, her mechanics weren't as good, but she kept battling and she actually got better in the fourth, fifth and sixth."

Darien jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first as Buch led off with a single and scored on Bell's RBI single. In the second, the Blue Wave took advantage of an error to go up 2-0 on Buch's RBI single.

If the Falcons (14-9) looked jittery at the start, that changed in the top of the third, when they reached DeMaio for three runs, highlighted by Martini's RBI single and an RBI double by Maggie Lapolla, who had three hits.

Darien pulled even in the fifth on another RBI single by Bell, setting the stage for the dramatic seventh.

In the top half, the Falcons loaded the bases with one out, but DeMaio bore down to get Meredith McGann on a popup and then struck out Lapolla.

Buch's usual aggressiveness on the bases set up the winning run. She open the bottom of the seventh with a hard-hit double off the glove of left fielder Lizzie Knuff and took third on an errant relay throw back into the infield.

"What created that [run' was her hustle on the hit that she had," Nick DeMaio said. "That is what she has to get credit for."

Ludlowe starter Aliza Guerrero intentionally walked the next two hitters to set up a force out.

Guerrero did her job by getting Bell to pop up, and it appeared she would get to face another batter when Martini caught the ball just a few feet behind of second base.

But then Buch came roaring home.

"If you saw us play [in the semifinals], you saw the crispness," Nick DeMaio added. "It wasn't quite that way today, but they did what they needed to do to win and they showed a tremendous anount of heart."

While the Falcons missed some opportunities — they had the bases loaded with no outs in the second — Samuelian can take some solace in the fact that no one expected his team to reach the finals.

"We just kept getting better with every game," he said. "You look at the team today, and if you had a video back  then, it's a night and day team. I could see our momentum building."