Merrimack's Lily Dionne tries to get back to first before Bishop Guertin's Bailey Doyle can tag the bag duirng Friday's game in Merrimack. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

MERRIMACK – Two evenly matched teams, both at .500. It spelled going in Friday a tone-setting game for the Bishop Guertin and Merrimac High School softball teams.

“Absolutely,” Bishop Guertin coach Leah Maciejewski said after her team’s 5-3 win. “We take things one game at a time like everybody else, and we all know in Division I anything can happen at any point in the season. So we’re going to use this as a positive moving forward … I’m sure we’ll probably see them again like we normally do in the postseason.”

“That’s the way we were looking at it,” Merrimack coach Greg Cochrane said, his team now 2-3. “Still early in the season, but in D1 every game matters, and we want to be competitive in that final standing. These are the games at home that we need to win … Our compete was there, our want-to was there.”

But so were the mistakes for Merrimack.

It was a 2-2 game in the top of the fifth when the Cardinals (3-2) loaded the bases with no one out. But it looked like Merrimack’s ace pitcher Avery Hui would get out of it after a pop up and strikeout. But she walked BG’s Michaella Bowen, then an infield error and a wild pitch brought home two more BG runs and the ‘Hawks were in a 5-2 hole.

“You get sloppy like that, you give free baserunners, and the margins become tighter,” Cochrane said. “You can’t make mistakes on top of mistakes and that’s what we did. … All credit to (BG), they took advantage of our mistakes.”

“One of the things we talk about with the girls is one at a time,” Maciejewski said. “No one’s going to win it on one swing. The idea of stringing things together, making the defense work. …For us it’s really about focus. Be aggressive when you can, be smart. That focused energy is what we’re looking for.”

And as Cochrane said, “That’s what we’re built on. We’re trying to force the action. They beat us at what we like to do.”

The two teams traded runs in the third and fourth. BG took a 1-0 lead on Sophie Bilodeau’s RBI double in the third, and got a sac fly from Bailey Doyle in the fourth. Merrimack’s Avery Hui singled in a run in the third and Julia Hoag singled one in in the fourth.

Guertin (three errors) wasn’t perfect by any means, either. And down 5-2, Merrimack also got a run on a single, sac bunt and infield error in the sixth to cut the deficit to two. But that’s where it stood, as Cards freshman reliever Avery Zapenas, finishing her third inning of relief, closed it out one-two-three. Bowen started, going four innings to get the win.

What has to be considered a big win.

“They’re a solid team, I think this was a pretty even matchup,” Maciejewski said. “We knew it was going to be good, we always have a good game with Merrimack and respect what they bring to the field. But we really have this mentality of stringing things together one at a time.”

And hoping that string will lead to a good place in late May/early June.

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