Softball: Spencer, Marple Newtown hang on to beat Chichester

NEWTOWN SQUARE >> The ball sailed off the bat of Chichester’s Sam Falcone and into center field, where Marple Newtown’s Caitlyn Spencer waited with bated breath. It would be a catch Spencer has made a hundred times before, and she is, by coach Mike Snow’s account, one of the Tigers’ most surehanded defensive players, even when the pressure is on. She took a few steps to her left, stood under the ball and tracked its path. Then Spencer squeezed her glove with two hands for the third out of the seventh inning as Marple Newtown held on for a 5-4 victory.

“I was scared, but knew I could get it,” said Spencer, who was 1 for 3 with a run scored. “There’s a lot of pressure, but I knew I had it.”

In the span of a week, a young and rebuilding Tigers (5-11) team notched its second victory over a club with District One playoffs aspirations. Last week, it was Penncrest (9-7) and Thursday Chichester (8-4), which won a state tournament game last spring. The Tigers are having fun playing the role of spoiler.

“It feels good because we know that we’re capable, but our record doesn’t show it,” said Spencer, a senior heading to Widener. “To get those wins, it’s big for us.”

Sophomore Ceire Devlin-Mohan worked two innings in relief of starter Nicole Atkins, who allowed five hits and two earned runs with three strikeouts. A pair of errors in the seventh gave Chichester life. But with the bases loaded, and two runs already across, Devlin-Mohan kept her cool in the circle.

“It was nerve-wracking,” she said. “I knew if (Chi took the lead) we would have had to make a big comeback.” Devlin-Mohan and Atkins had to navigate through the meat of Chichester’s order, which includes three-hole batter Nicole O’Donnell and cleanup hitter Hayley Coale. “For the three and four hitters, we wanted to keep the ball away and out of their zones,” Devlin-Mohan said. “We wanted to jam them up, so we threw them mainly curves and screwballs and a few drops here and there.”

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