HOLYOKE – Tuesday’s MIAA Division 5 semifinal baseball game hung by a tenuous thread in the bottom of the fifth inning.  

No. 9 Hopkins Academy had a slim 5-3 lead, but No. 5 Pioneer was working on its comeback effort. The Panthers had clawed their way back from a 5-0 deficit in the bottom of the third, and were posed to add more runs to the scoreboard. 

Pioneer’s Braeden Tsipenyuk singled and Alex McClelland blasted a long double to get runners on third and second with no outs. Hopkins pitcher Cody West struck out the Panthers’ next batter to get one out, but the situation looked dire for the Golden Hawks. 

Enter James Fitzgibbons, Hopkins’ third baseman. 

Pioneer’s fourth batter of the inning, Ian Simpson, drilled a line drive that Fitzgibbons snagged at third, then dove headfirst to third base to get the force out for a double play, getting Hopkins out of the inning and giving it all the momentum.

“I just thought like, ‘Please God don't let this drop out of my glove,’” Fitzgibbons said on the play. “Right as I caught it, my initial reaction was just dive back to the base to get the double play… the adrenaline was crazy.”

Hopkins Academy rode the wave of Fitzgibbons’ double play into the sixth inning, where it scored four runs to cement a 9-4 win to punch their ticket back to the Division 5 state final. They’ll face either No. 2 Bourne or No. 6 Ayer-Shirley in the championship game. Those teams played late Tuesday night.

“I've been saying it since the start of the year. With the talent we have and the team coming back, everybody getting a year of experience – we’d have to have some kids step up because we lost Andrew Ciaglo last year, but I knew if we play our style of baseball, hit the ball well, hit it on the line, don't make errors, we can beat anybody in the state,” West said.

West started on the mound for the Golden Hawks and nearly went the distance, throwing 6.2 innings before reliever Patrick Fitzgibbons came on for the final out. West finished the game with six strikeouts and allowed three earned runs. 

It took Pioneer a bit to get its feet under them. Starting pitcher Ethan Quinn got through the first inning no problem, striking out one and relying on his defense to get the next two batters out, but he struggled with control in the second inning. Hopkins pounced in the frame, waiting out five walks and getting two hits to put up five runs and take a commanding 5-0 lead. Simpson came on in relief in the third inning and closed out the game, finishing with three walks and four strikeouts. 

“I have full trust in Ethan, I have full trust in all my pitchers. Sometimes it just isn’t your day,” Pioneer head coach Kevin Luippold said. “So we trusted the next guy up and Ian came in and did a great job. There’s only five runs (Quinn) gave up and obviously we’ve got to score to win anyway.”

The Panthers got their bats going in the third inning, snagging two hits and grabbing two walks to score three runs, pulling within two. After James Fitzgibbons’ dramatic double play to end the fifth, the Golden Hawks pulled away in the sixth inning with four more runs, getting through their entire lineup before Pioneer was able to end the inning. 

The Panthers refused to go away, holding Hopkins scoreless in the top of the seventh and promptly loading the bases in the bottom of the frame in a last-ditch effort to pull even. West walked two batters and hit a third, allowing Pioneer to score its fourth run of the day with the bases still loaded. That prompted Hopkins head coach Dan Vreeland to put in Patrick Fitzgibbons, and he was able to get the Golden Hawks out of the game safely. 

“We know that’s our season on the line. None of us wanted it to end here,” Pioneer’s Simpson said on his team’s resilience. “We’re all competitors and we're not going to give up. We've been down before, and we just battled.”

Hannah Bevis can be reached at hbevis@gazettenet.com. Follow her on Twitter @Hannah_Bevis1.

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