Lady Hatters Come Back, Beat Perkiomen Valley 6-5

The second round of the PIAA District One 4-A softball playoffs can be a perilous place for the eight seeded teams that receive first-round byes.

No. 2 seed Hatboro-Horsham High School nearly found out how treacherous Wednesday at home before coming back in the late innings for a 6-5 victory against a tenacious Perkiomen Valley squad.

Nicole Casagrand's hard single off PVHS first baseman Rachel Hamm scored Carlie Johnson from third base to end the game in walk-off fashion in the bottom of the seventh. 

Johnson led off the seventh with a scorching grounder down the third-base line, hustling her way to second for a double and was moved along by Jen Cader's ground out to second to set up the winning play.

That was the final wave of momentum in a game filled with twists and turns. 

And it allows HHHS (17-3) to extend its season on Friday at 4 p.m. against Continental Conference rival and No. 7 seed Central Bucks East, which beat Methacton 1-0 on Wednesday. 

"We didn't win on Wednesday," said Hatboro-Horsham coach Joe DiFilippo, "we escaped." 

It will be the final home game for seniors Casagrand, Johnson, Adrienne Giuliani, Heather Lutz, Maria Spinosa, Emily Wrenn and the injured Kelsey Koelzer. 

The final two games of the district playoffs and the state tournament will be played at neutral sites.

The Lady Hatters seemed to be in complete control with a 3-0 as Casagrand pitched a perfect game through four innings, but No. 18 Pekiomen Valley pulled itself off the mat in a similar fashion to Monday's 5-4 upset of No. 15 West Chester East to take the lead suddenly in the fifth. 

The Vikings trailed East 4-0 early, but came back to tie that game in the seventh and won in eight innings. 

With a 3-1 lead, two out and the bases loaded in the fifth, Casagrand forced a pop-up from Hamm that appeared to get her out of the inning. 

But the ball fell untouched between Casagrand and first baseman Heather Lutz to score Jenny Minnick from third and Ana Bruni stunned the large and pro-Lady Hatter crowd with a drive to deep left-center that hit the yellow plastic padding on the top of the fence and bounced over for a three-run homer to gave the Vikings a 5-3 advantage.

Bruni had struck out in her first two at-bats. 

"We could have gotten down on ourselves after that, but we didn't," said Casagrand, who dominated in every inning, but the fifth. "My team did a great job of backing me up." 

With late-game pressure mounting, Daria Edwards manufactured a run in the bottom of the fifth. Edwards led off by grounding a hard single through the hole at short, was advanced on Johnson's grounder to second and scored on a passed ball and a wild pitch to make it 5-4.

Perkiomen Valley's freshman starting pitcher Emily Oltman was touched by a single to center from Casagrand and then hit Giuliani with a pitch to lead to her exit from the game with none out in the sixth. 

Alex Haines replaced Oltman in the circle and Jaynie Black greeted her with a perfect sacrifice bunt to advance the two runners. Haines then hit Spinosa (2-for-3) to load the bases.

Pinch-runner Lexi Campbell was cut down at home on a chopper to third by DeAnna Moyer and the Vikings looked like they might escape damage when Edwards smashed a grounder to short with two outs.

But Bruni had the ball bounce off her chest to score Giuliani with the tying run. 

Casagrand got out of the top of the seventh unscathed with two pop-ups and a strikeout — her sixth of the game — to put the Lady Hatters in position to win.

A bout of wildness by Oltman gave Hatboro-Horsham a 3-0 lead in the second as she issued consecutive walks to Cader, Casagrand and Giuliani and hit Black on the foot for the first run. 

Spinosa's line drive to center fell in to score pinch-runner Campbell and Giuliani scampered across the plate on a wild pitch.

But the Lady Hatters couldn't come up with the clutch hit in the early innings that could have put the game out of reach early. Hatboro-Horsham left five runners on in the first three innings and eight for the game.

Those statistics didn't frustrate this experienced, playoff-tested team for long. 

"It was frustrating," said Johnson, who was robbed of a hit early in the game on a shot to PVHS second baseman Minnick. "But we knew that the hits were eventually going to happen." 

And the offense awoke just in the nick of time. 

"There were no worries," said a confident Casagrand, who was 2-for-2 with two walks. "Our team always hits."

PLAYOFF NOTES

In the other quadrant of Hatboro-Horsham's side of the draw, No. 3 Pennsbury held off Upper Darby — a team that the Lady Hatters have knocked out in the past two years — 3-1 and No. 6 West Chester Henderson survived Avon Grove 1-0 in eight innings. 

The winner of the Pennbury-Henderson contest meets the victor of the Hatboro-Horsham against CB East game next Tuesday. 

The biggest surprise on Wednesday was in a Continental Conference showdown when defending District One champion North Penn stunned last year's state champion and No. 4 seed Central Bucks South 14-3. 

CB South, which finished as runner-up along with CB East to Hatboro-Horsham in conference play, beat the Lady Hatters in both regular-season games, but lost to No. 13 North Penn for the second time in three games this year.

North Penn ousted CB South from the district playoffs in the semifinals last year.

That sets up an all-Continental Conference quarterfinal as North Penn faces dangerous Pennridge on Friday. 

No. 12 Pennridge, which snapped a five-game losing streak on Monday, blanked No. 5 Owen J. Roberts 3-0. Pitcher Paige DeCew has regained her normal dominating form to allow only one run in 14 innings this week.

Top-seeded Neshaminy advanced with a 3-1 win against Boyertown, while Dowingtown East outlasted Spring-Ford 2-0.  

Neshaminy hosts Downingtown East on Friday, with the winner of that game playing North Penn, or Pennridge in the semifinals. 

With the top four finishers in District One advancing to state play, the powerful Continental Conference is guaranteed of having two teams in the state tournament again

The only way that Continental Conference teams could meet in the state championship game on June 14 at Penn State is if one of the two surviving conference teams finishes third in district play.

The other three district qualifiers will be in the upper part of the state's 16-team playoff bracket, while the third-place team will be in the lower section of the draw.