POLAND — With one swing of the bat, the momentum of the game shifted Tuesday.

Tess Haller’s three-run homer in the second inning suddenly closed the gap and had Cape Elizabeth within reach of Poland in their Western B preliminary game.

It was the kind of wallop that might have struck fear in the hearts of some lesser teams and rattled their confidence. The Knights, they just shrugged it off.

“Coach always tells us to focus on the next pitch,” sophomore shortstop Sarah Walton said. “I think that mentality really carries over in every game. We just think about the next pitch and go from there.”

Whatever momentum was lost on Haller’s home run was quickly retrieved by the Knights. After Cape got within striking distance, Poland answered with six runs in the third. The Knights were up 15-4 and nearly mercied the Capers in the fifth. Cape rallied in the seventh before the Knights finished it for a 15-10 win.

Poland advances to Thursday’s quarterfinal at Greely at 4 p.m. The Knights beat the Rangers 8-3 earlier in the season. Poland had beaten Cape 11-3 last month, but the Knights have lost twice to the Capers in the last two tournaments.

“We don’t take any team lightly,” Walton said. “So we really wanted to fight for this. We all wanted it really bad and this was great for all of us.”

Walton finished with four hits, three runs and an RBI, while Madison Simard had three hits, scored three runs and drove in one. Freshman Morgan Brousseau had a pair of hits and drove in four, including a two-run homer.

“The bats came to play today,” Poland coach Kat McKay said. “I was very proud of our girls, especially our freshman. She stepped up big today. Morgan had a bomb. That right there, if we can’t win a game like that, she just brought spirit to that.”

It was a game that had both starting pitchers chased from the circle within the first two innings. Then the starters came back in relief later in the game. Poland got a superb effort from senior Kolby Woods. She came on in the second after the Haller homer. She put down five straight Capers and didn’t allow a hit until the fifth. Woods allowed just one hit and no runs through four-plus innings. Cape got to her in the seventh. Starter Kylie Martin came back in and finished the game with three straight outs.

“Kylie just wasn’t there, but Kolby picked her up,” McKay said. “She had a great four or five innings, but she just got tired. She threw a lot of pitches.”

Cape (8-9) took a 1-0 lead in the first with an RBI hit by Haller. That was after Martin hit the first batter of the game and walked another in the first. Poland (12-5) erased that deficit quickly enough. 

The Knights scored six runs on six hits in the bottom of the inning. It was similar to the regular-season meeting in which Cape scored first but Poland had a 4-1 lead after the first. Michaella Arsenault tripled to lead off, and Emily Gibson bunted her home. Haley Whitworth later had a single and an error on the hit that plated Kelsey DeBurra. Simard and Walton followed with RBI singles. Then a two-run double by Brousseau made it 6-1.

“We knew we couldn’t come out with big heads, but if we kept on our game and we were on our toes, we’d be right there,” said Simard, a sophomore first baseman. 

In the second, Martin walked a batter but struck out the next two. After Megan Nicholson reached on an error, Haller followed with a three-run shot. 

“We just shook it off,” Simard said. “We just shut them down and got right back at them. We knew if we swing our bats, we’d be fine. We had to do what we’ve been doing.”

Though the Knights were shutout in the second by Madeline Bauman, who relieved starter Lily Jordan in the first,  Poland scored six more on five hits in the third. That brought Jordan back in to replace Bauman. Arsenault had an RBI single. An error on a DeBurra fly plated two more. Whitworth singled in DeBurra, and Martin had a two-run double for a 12-4 lead.

“We have a great team, and I love them all,” Walton said. “They always know how to make things happen.”

In the fourth, Brousseau belted a two-run homer to center. Then Simard scored on a wild pitch in the fifth to make it 15-4. Poland nearly ended the game there via the 12-run rule but stranded a runner at third.

In the seventh, Cape produced six runs on five hits and closed the gap to 15-10. Sam Feenstra had an RBI single and Kelly O’Sullivan drove in a pair with a double. Martin came in and faced the top of the order and shut them down for the win.

“It’s our third year seeing them in the playoffs, and it’s our turn,” McKay said.

kmills@sunjournal.com