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Campbell celebrates softball crown

By Tom King - Sports Writer | Jun 19, 2021

Campbell softball slugger Chloe Steiniger gets mobbed by her teammates after her second homer during last Saturday's 18-6 Division III title game win over Hopkinton in Concord. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

CONCORD – Call them the Bash Sisters.

That’s what the Campbell High School girls softball team did all season long, bash the ball. The 17-0 Cougars didn’t hold back in last weekend’s Division III state title game, either, knocking out 16 hits in their 18-6 win over Hopkinton at Memorial Field.

But their win goes deeper than just a group of players who could hit. The Cougar nucleus was a group of 10 seniors who had played together for almost 10 years.

“We’ve been together since we were eight years old, playing on Litchfield Blast, winning regionals and states,” said the biggest basher of them all, Campbell catcher Chloe Steiniger, who had two homers, a double and seven RBIs in the finals. “That all came out again (in the finals).

“It’s been fun. Hotel trips – we’re family. We’re sisters. These are my nine sisters right here. I love them all to death.”

Besides Steiniger, the other seniors on the Cougar squad were Kayleigh Willnus, Riley Gamache, Abby Buxton, Lyndsey Brown, Emily Smith, Emily Cooper, Alexa Robert, Sarah Corbett and Maddie Davis.

Even the non-seniors fit in.

“We’ve all been playing together since we were six or seven,” Campbell relief pitcher Catherine Carignan said. “We’ve all had that team chemistry and team energy since Day One. I think just carrying it on to this year, knowing that it’s our last season playing (together) was just a motivator for a lot of the girls.”

Let’s go through the history of this group. As a 10U team on 2013-14, they won two New Hampshire Babe Ruth state titles and two New England Regional titles, with a total of 10 tournament wins and a record of 70-13-1.

In 2015-16, as a 12U Litchfield Blast team, they did the same thing – two state titles, two regional titles, two World Series appearances, and a record of 93-24-1 with 13 tourney wins.

In multiple seasons at Litchfield Middle School, they put together a 40-1 record with four Tri-County championships and three undefeated seasons. Fast forward to Campbell High School, and they had a 23-1 JV record with a JV tourney title.

Wow. No wonder Cougars head coach Eric Gibbons calls it “the best team I’ve ever coached.”

Why?

“The friendships, the chemistry, they do their job,” Gibbons said. “There’s no yelling, no screaming. Ten seniors sacrificed tremendously to get here. And when I say tremendously, they gave up their ‘Senior Skip Day’. They graduated (the night before final). We ran a practice at 2 o’clock, 2:30, then they graduated. They sacrificed parties and nightlife to get here (to the finals.).”

When spring sports got the green light in the background of the pandemic, Gibbons said “I thought this was our year.

These seniors were in this championship game as sophomores. So they’re veterans.”

To have that experience helps.

“Their chemistry is the secret to this team,” Gibbons said. “There’s zero drama, everyone pulls together. I raised four daughters, I know what drama can be. And we had none of it.”

The game itself was 7-6 at one point, and when the Cougars pulled away, it surprised even their coach.

“When we cracked this open, it surprised me a little bit,” Gibbons said. “I thought it would be decided by one or two runs.”

But oh, that hitting, as the Cougars came in hitting .403.Hopkinton High School softball coach Dan Meserve has never seen a team hit like Campbell did.

“Nope, up and down the lineup they’re good,” Meserve said. “They’re just a great hitting lineup. We needed to shut the door down early and make them start doubting themselves. Hey, they’re a good club, they hit the ball hard. … And we just didn’t do it defensively. And the way they hit, exactly.”

And the hit total just kept going up as the day went on, and up, and up vs. poor Hawks starter Megan Kimball-Rhines.

“Against a pitcher we prepared for, we knew what we were going to be doing, attacking her first pitches,” Gibbons said. “And it worked out. She’s a pitcher who works in front, you get behind and then she throws the junk. We never let it get there.”

They didn’t against much of anyone this year. The Cougars outscored the opposition 165-20 during the regular season, mainly against Division II competition thanks to the regional-type scheduling. Then they blasted teams 59-11 in the tournament.

Carignan had to come into the game in the third after Cougar starter Davis took a ball off her leg. After giving up a sac fly and RBI hit, Carignan kept the Hawks off the scoreboard the rest of the way, allowing just two hits in the next three innings.

“At first I was a little nervous, but after that first half inning, I was definitely ready to get in my groove, and I felt really good after,” Carignan said.

“She came in tight and nervous and then she settled in,” Gibbons said. “She’ll be our starting pitcher next year, but she’s also my best outfielder.

The game only lasted five plus innings as in the sixth, it was all over. Steiniger smacked a two-run homer and two more runs crossed the plate on wild pitches to end the game and give the Cougars their first title since 2015. Gibbons said he has “a great sophomore class, a great freshmen class” and says he has incoming freshmen who can play well, too. “So I’m excited.”

And the bats are just tremendous.

“Everyone was hitting well,” Gibbons said. “Hitting’s contagious. Everyone’s either hitting, or they’re not hitting. That’s not the first time we’ve seen that.”

No, these Cougar players had seen it the last decade or so.

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