Offense fueled Cougars Qualey paces potent attack

SHERMAN STATION – As the Katahdin girls softball team took batting practice in the rain Thursday, a group of outfielders watched balls sail off the bat of senior Michaelene Duffy and over their heads, the hits too high and hard to make a catch.

Batting practice here is more like battering practice.

The girls batter the outfield fence (and the top of the nearby baseball dugout), send streaking line drives through the air, pepper the infield with hard ground balls, and smack high fly balls into the outfield.

The Cougars have relied on a high-powered offense this year and it’s worked out well, especially as ace pitcher Lindsay Duffy-Stanley spent most of the spring recovering from a knee injury.

Katahdin, which ended the regular season with a 12-4 record, holds the No. 1 seed for the Eastern Maine Class D tournament.

The Cougars are looking to put together some scrimmages while waiting for their quarterfinal game June 9. They will face the winner of a second-round preliminary game between No. 8 Greater Houlton Christian Academy and No. 9 Van Buren.

And they’ll have a nice surprise for the tourney – Duffy-Stanley is healthy and has already pitched a game. She also took a couple of good whacks during Thursday’s batting practice.

Her return can only be another good omen for Katahdin, which senior first baseman Lacey Willett said has been pretty lucky already.

“I told my coach at the beginning of the season that I thought we would have a luck-out season,” she said. “I really think we’ve been doing that because we only had two seniors to start off with and our good pitcher just barely came back from having her knee surgery.”

Katahdin has done quite well through a tough schedule of top-ranked Class C and D teams. The Cougars beat Class C Hodgdon twice and split with Schenck of East Millinocket but fell to Class C’s No. 2 seed, Lee Academy, in both games this year.

Katahdin also beat Class D opponents Ashland (the No. 6 team), No. 4 Fort Fairfield and No. 8 Greater Houlton Christian.

“We’ve played hard, we’ve had a couple of bad innings, but we bring it back and end up winning,” Willett said.

The Cougars’ biggest wins came in a two-day stretch in May, and those two victories cemented the team’s top seed.

Katahdin was supposed to have opened up against perennial contender Bangor Christian April 18, but that game was postponed to May 9. The Cougars and the Patriots were scheduled to play their second game of the season May 10.

That set up a showdown of the top two teams in Eastern Maine Class D. Katahdin won the first game 9-8 by withstanding a five-run Bangor Christian rally in the bottom of the seventh. The next day Willett hit a two-run homer and Angie Qualey hit a solo shot in an 8-5 victory.

Duffy, a regular infielder, pitched both games.

“I thought it was a big deal,” she said. “Their pitcher was a lot different than what we were used to and I thought we did really well hitting. We had one bad inning but other than that we played really well. We played together. We were all pretty psyched.”

That Willett, Qualey and Duffy all contributed offensively was no surprise.

Junior infielder Qualey led the team with a .581 batting average through the first 14 games of the season and had 21 RBIs. Duffy had pounded out four home runs, five doubles, two triples and 24 RBIs for a .448 average. Willett has drive in 16 runs on five doubles, three homers and a .449 average.

But those girls were all expecting to hit well. One of Katahdin’s biggest surprises this year has been outfielder Megan Libby, who has displayed a lot of power for a 5-foot-7 junior. She’s got the second-highest batting average, .458, with a four triples, 24 RBIs and a team-high five home runs.

Megan’s sister Mindy Libby has also been hitting well, with 15 RBIs and a .365 average.

“We have amazing power hitters,” Willett said. “Even the little girls can hit it over the fence. We had one game where we hit five home runs. Our defense comes on and off, but our hitting has been steady all year.”

Because of Duffy-Stanley’s absence, the pitching hasn’t been as consistent as the offense. But Duffy, Morgan Anderson, and the Libby sisters have all stepped in at some point and worked in the circle.

“They did really, really good but it was frustrating,” Duffy-Stanley said. “I would sit there and think, I wish I could be out there.”

The seniors also pointed to the efforts of freshman K.C. Duffy-Stanley, Lindsay’s sister. K.C. stepped into the shortstop position and has become of the team’s top defensive players.