Hurricane Seniors Finish Atop Western Mass

WESTFIELD, Mass. -- In 2022, the Hoosac Valley softball team won a Western Massachusetts Championship with a very young team filled with potential.

 

On Saturday, the girls who ruled the region as eighth-graders showed just how good they could be as high school seniors.

 

Gracelyn Wright struck out eight, and Genevieve Lagess went 3-for-5 with four runs batted in as the Hurricanes beat Monson, 17-3, to claim their first Western Mass title in four years.

 

Ella Bissaillon went 2-for-4 with a triple and a double, and Harper Bialas was 2-for-4 with three runs scored as Hoosac Valley kept its perfect season alive, improving to 19-0 this spring.

 

Wright, one of the seniors who played on the 2022 title team, said that the 2026 edition did things a little differently.

 

"In eighth grade, everyone said it wa a pitcher-dominant team, and so this year our goal was to make it about everybody, not just one person," Wright said. "As a team, we all came together, we all did this as a team together. It wasn't just one individual person. And we're all proud of each other for accomplishing this amazing goal.

 

"We've been working so hard for this entire season, and we finally did it. I'm just so proud of everybody."

 

Izabela Tart, another senior captain, said it was a long road back to the finals.

 

"Not making it, it was really hard, because every team's big goal is to make it to this and to states, so not making it was a little disappointing," Tart said.

 

"But the beginning of our senior season, we all said that what we want to do is we want to go back, we want to win Western Mass, and we want to make a big impact on softball as a sport -- just everybody playing hard and being like a family."

 

Monson surprised the tournament's top seed with a pair of unearned runs in the top of the first inning.

 

But Hoosac Valley got its offense on track in the bottom of the second, returning the favor by taking advantage of three Mustang errors in a four-run rally that featured an RBI double from Bissaillon.

 

Monson got back within a run with Maddy Caron's second RBI in the top of the third, and it stayed a 4-3 game until the Hurricanes pulled away with four runs in the fourth, five in the fifth and four more in the sixth to remove all doubt.

 

"We came out here and we had a little bit of a rough start and we were down," Tart said. "But finally getting our hits together and winning was so amazing."

 

Lagess and Rachael Wnuk keyed the fifth-inning rally, each providing a two-run single. Gianna Witek and Lagess each had an RBI single in the sixth.

 

True to Wright's word, everyone contributed to the offense. All but one Hoosac Valley hitter had at least a hit in a 17-hit Hurricane attack.

 

Wright, after giving up a couple of runs early, did not allow another runner in scoring position until the top of the seventh, when the game was out of reach.

 

Hoosac Valley now turns its attention to the Division 5 State Tournament. Heading into the weekend, it was the third-ranked team in the commonwealth in the latest MIAA in-season power rankings.

 

The brackets for the state softball tournaments will be released on Wednesday.