September 6, 2026 | Springfield, IL: On the last game of the regular season, we celebrated the traditional Fan Appreciation Day and honored the OG, Maybelle Blair, with her bobblehead giveaway.
Tonight, Boston came to the stadium with some swagger. You got the feeling that the Hunters had something up their sleeve – and were just waiting to show the world they were better than they have been.
Lexi Hastings on why the Hunters’ sudden surge, “You continuously see us improving… that should scare some teams.” And with that, Boston scored the first five runs of the game. And Hastings’ hands were all over it.
In the first, Hasting’s lead off base hit, stolen base, and race to home plate on a wild pitch put Boston on the board. Her leadoff walk in the third, followed by Denver Bryant’s free pass, gave Alli Schroder incentive to lace a two-RBI double to the left-center gap, followed by Edith De Leija’s two-RBI jack, two batters later.
The momentum Boston craved was so thick and promising in the Springfield air after lefty starter Olivia Bricker retired the first six batters she faced.
But the gnawing issue for Boston, especially when it comes to a team like San Francisco – if you give them one error, they’ll get three runs, and if you do it again, with walks, they’ll tag you for seven – which they did off of Maïka Dumais, and by the end of the fourth the Firebells had a 10-5 lead. And to quote one of the best malaprop men in the business, the late, great former NY Yankee, Yogi Berra, “It was deja vu all over again.”
Every Firebell bat but one had something to say. Amanda Gianelloni was 3-5, two doubles and three RBI’s, Skylar Kaplan, who doesn’t know how to not get on base, went 3-4 with a run batted in and on the last day to tie and/or go ahead of Denae Benites in the heated long ball race, Kelsie Whitmore matched her counterpart captain with a three-run blast ending her night 2-4 with four RBI’s and bestowed the final Player of the Game.
The Hunters made an attempted rally run in their last at-bats. Hastings, yeah, she’s heating up for the Postseason, led off with an opposite-field double; Bryant brought her home, but in trying to stretch a single into a double, got herself out, and Schroder, swinging something special the past few games, clocked a two-run shot over the centerfield fence, her first WPBL home run on the last Sunday of the regular season.