SANFORD – Sanford’s Jordan Wilson brought home teammate Jen Jones with a bottom-of-the-seventh single Thursday afternoon, edging the Spartans ahead of Bonny Eagle 2-1 and into Saturday’s Class A West semifinals.

The victory faces third-ranked Sanford (now 12-5 on the season) with the challenge of second-place South Portland (15-2, the Red Riots haven’t lost since April 29), in South Portland at 3:30 p.m.

“They matched us pitch for pitch, batter for batter,” Sanford head coach Kristi Cochin said. “It was a real good game – it was really clean. But we knew that; we were talking all week at practice. It was going to come down to either who made the fewest mistakes, or who came through when they needed to. Because we knew there wasn’t going to be a lot of hitting today.”

Each team’s defensive efforts negated the other’s offensive efforts in the early game, keeping the score at 0-0 until the top of the fourth, when Bonny Eagle managed to get Kelsey Gaddy around the bases. The Spartans immediately countered, however, tallying one in the bottom of the fourth on the speed of Morgan Fogg.

“[Fourth] inning, we got the first run, and then they came right back up – it felt like the same batting order was up every single time,” said Rondeau. “If we had 3-4-5, they had 3-4-5. So in that [fourth] inning, we got a run, they came back and tied it up, and then we kept it scoreless till the seventh.”

In that inning, in Sanford’s last ups, the Spartans racked up two rapid-fire outs before Jen Jones knocked herself a double into left-center. Wilson followed her into the batter’s box, and onto base, belting her single into right-center and heading for first. She didn’t need to go any further, though, as Jones made it all the way home, securing the Spartans’ victory.

“[It’s] kind of one of those things where you’re knocking on the door all game,” Cochin said. “You’re confident that they’re going to come through with something in the end, but then the longer the game goes and they’re still not opening it up, the more you start to think, ‘OK, well what am I going to have to do to produce a run?’ Luckily they got up there with two outs and just hit and hit, and that’s all it takes sometimes. And when you play good defense, you’re a couple hits away from a win, and that’s good for them to see. It happened that way for us, because that was a tough Bonny Eagle team.”

“It was a very well-fought battle,” said Scots head coach Sue Rondeau. “Great defense on both ends. [Sanford’s] Sam Adams pitched a great game; I don’t know how many strikeouts she ended with, but we were struggling getting the bat on the ball.”

Adams hurled 12 Ks, in fact, in her win for the Spartans. Alli Pike absorbs the loss for Bonny Eagle.

Cochin is excited about her team’s run to the semifinals.

“It’s an interesting couple days; the seniors graduate tomorrow. I think they did a great job of focusing today; I hope they can continue to focus Saturday. [South Portland is a] top-notch program. I think it’s going to be tight again. From here on out, everything will be…one-run games. Just playing quality softball.”

Rondeau feels “really good” about the Scots’ season as a whole. “I think we competed with the best. When we started off, I don’t think we fully believed in ourselves, to start the year, because [the team] kind of struggled last year, and we slowly just got better and more confident. We had the athletes, defensively, offensively – we had it to make a run – and just, the better team came out on top today. But I’m very proud of what they did this season.”