On Sunday, two playoff rivals won their quarterfinal-round games to set up a highly anticipated semifinal showdown on Tuesday. With wins over Eastchester and Nyack, respectively, Ursuline and Harrison ensured one more meeting between the two clubs, with the winner going on to play for a Section I title.
Taking on the Eagles, No. 3 Ursuline rode a strong performance from Emily Duhaney, who tossed a complete game against the Eagles that saw her record eight strikeouts—including the 600th of her career—and collect two hits and a stolen in a 6-4 Koalas win.
Later in the day, her counterpart for Harrison had a similar outing, as the No. 2 Huskies put together 6-1 victory over Nyack.
Against the Red Hawks, Huskies’ hurler Gabriella Triano went seven strong innings, fanning 11 batters and allowing just one earned run—a solo homer—in the process. Triano also homered and doubled, while teammate Alexi Cozzali went 4-for-4 and hit for the cycle to push the Huskies within one game of the section finals.
Heading into Tuesday’s game with Ursuline, Harrison head coach Dean Marino mused on the similarities between the Huskies and Koalas, noting that the two teams had played each other tough in recent years.
The last meeting between the clubs came on May 15, when Ursuline won 4-2 on the road.
“If you look at the last two years, we’ve probably played three times; each game has been decided by one or two runs, so we know we’re evenly matched,” said Marino. “We know they’ve got a tough pitcher [in Duhaney] who had success against us last time, and they were able to get the clutch hits against us, which made the difference.”
Marino continued that, at this point in the season, there’s very little separating the teams still alive. The winner of Tuesday’s matchup between Harrison and Ursuline will take on the winner of No. 1 Tappan Zee and No. 5 Pearl River for the Class A title on May 27.
“The top four teams, the top six teams, it’s really a coin-flip to see who is going to win a game between them; When you get to this point, any team can beat anyone else on any particular day,” said Marino. “So it’s going to come down to the team that does the little things, doesn’t make mistakes in big spots.”
