“It was great to see the girls battle and not give up,” said Cony coach Ray Bowden, who was filling in for head coach Angela McKenna. “It was tough falling behind early and battling the wind, but they came through.”

Alena Ambers opened the eighth with a single, Brooklyn Belanger walked and McGuire reached to load the bases for Carly Lettre. The junior hit the first pitch she saw, driving in the tying runs to set up Fairbrother-White’s heroics.

“She’s (Lettre) our big hitter,” Bowden said. “We also have some other big hitters, but she comes up big for us.”

Lettre finished with four hits, including a triple and a homer, while driving in six runs for the Rams (1-0). 

“We really didn’t give up. We came to win, we wanted to win, and we won,” Lettre said. “We didn’t give up because we were down, and we overcame some errors in the field to pull it out.”

McGuire added three hits, scoring three runs and stealing two bases. Alexis Couverette and Sam Melland each had two hits for Cony in the victory.

“There’s a lot of positives that can be taken from this game,” Brunswick coach Hugh Dwyer added. “It was kind of tough conditions out here and with the turf and no fences, it posed challenges for both teams.”

Brunswick jumped all over the Rams in the top of the first. The first five batters reached safely, highlighted by a Shea Sullivan two-run double.

After Alexis Guptil’s sacrifice, Riley McAllaster smacked a line drive into the gap and ran around the bases for a two-run homer as Brunswick took a 6-0 lead.

“Scoring a lot of runs is huge for us, it was important to have everyone hitting,” Sullivan said. “We had some key hits in some big spots today.”

Cony answered in the bottom half, taking advantage of three Sullivan walks and a hit batsman to plate five runs, highlighted by Lettre’s two-run triple.

The Dragons used the long ball in the fourth, getting a pair of runs on back-to-back home runs on consecutive pitches from Sullivan and Mia Klimash that found the left-center gap and rolled away from the Cony outfielders to go up by four runs, 9-5.

“Not having a fence was a disadvantage defensively for both teams,” Lettre said.

Cony bounced back in the home half of the inning. Belanger and McGuire led off the frame with singles and both eventually came around to score on passed balls. Melland hit a two-run single to tie the score at nine apiece. Sullivan fanned the next two batters to strand two runners.

With an 11-10 lead, Brunswick pushed the lead to two with a run in the top half of the seventh. Morgan Foster led off the inning with a triple and eventually came in to score on a passed ball. Cony intentionally walked Sullivan and McGuire struck out the next two batters to keep the deficit at two, 12-10.

But Cony rallied again. McGuire led off the seventh with a single and, three pitches later, came around to score on a Lettre home run that sailed into the wind over the outfielders. After a pair of Sullivan strikeouts, the Rams nearly pulled off the comeback after the Dragons committed two errors. But Sullivan reached back and recorded one of her seven strikeouts to force extra innings.

Guptil singled to open the eighth and scored the go-ahead run off a Lauren Whitlock single. After Whitlock advanced to third on a passed ball, Mia DeSantis sacrificed her home for a two-run cushion, 14-12.