Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Poland senior Meredith Trevis rounds third base and high-fives head coach Jim Serich after hitting her first career home run Tuesday afternoon.

BEAVER TOWNSHIP — Poland senior Meredith Trevis had given up.

At this point in her final softball season, she didn’t think it was going to happen. Despite being a .397 hitter, Trevis had never hit a home run in her high school career — until now.

On Tuesday, Trevis stepped to the plate in the first inning of Poland’s district semifinal showdown against Brookfield.

The Bulldogs already had a run on the board and a runner on base. Trevis paced herself, like any normal at bat, but then she swung, made contact and the ball went up and over the fence and never came back. After four years, she finally had her first home run.

“It was really just shocking to me if I’m being honest,” Trevis said. “If it was going to happen, it would happen. But it was just that first pitch, I didn’t even feel like it was going over. But it also means a lot because my sister, who’s 10 years older than me, hit one her senior year. So that’s kind of all I wanted to do was beat her. So now we both have one and I couldn’t be more happy.”

Trevis’ first-inning blast helped set the tone early, punctuating a four-run inning for Poland. The Bulldogs went on to rack up 15 hits, including two more home runs, in their 10-3 win over Brookfield on Tuesday to advance to the Division III district final.

“We had two games against Girard (recently) where we were really swinging the bat well, and (Brookfield pitcher) Miranda (Nicholson) is kind of like that pitcher from Girard,” said Poland head coach Jim Serich. “So you hope you can kind of keep that momentum going after two games like that. You come up in that first inning and get a senior who hits her first home run, that kind of set the table and they just kept hitting.”

Mary Brant, however, is no stranger to home runs, and was responsible for the other two moon shots for the Bulldogs.

The first was a two-run blast in the third inning, while the second scored three runs in the sixth inning.

“I think we all kind of noticed that if (Nicholson) got down a pitch, she’d bring it right down the middle,” Brant said. “So that’s what we were all looking for, I think collectively as a team. But for me, I just like it a little higher, so I’m just swinging for those balls.”

Through three innings, Poland had built a five-run lead, but the Bulldogs weren’t out of the woods just yet.

A solo home run by Katie Logan in the third got Brookfield on the board. But then the Warriors started to play to their small ball strengths in the sixth inning, tacking on two runs off RBIs from Abby DeJoy and Katie Gibson to cut into Poland’s lead and make the Bulldogs sweat a little bit.

It didn’t last long however. Brant’s second home run punctuated another four-run inning in the bottom of the sixth and helped the Bulldogs put away the Warriors.

“I think in the early innings, the big difference was their balls were finding spots in the gaps and over the fence, while we were hitting right to people,” said Brookfield head coach David DeJoy. “So it’s not like we came up and struck out a bunch of times. We were putting the bat on the ball, we were just hitting it right to the defense.”

Brookfield ends its season at 19-5 and will bid farewell to a massively successful 10-player senior class.

“I told them I was proud of them,” David said. “They had a very successful season, even though we came up short in this game. We had 10 seniors and it’s hard to say goodbye to them. I’ve really grown attached to them over the years and I was proud of them for not hanging their heads and not giving up and fighting until the end.”

No. 4 seed Poland now moves on to face top-seeded South Range on Thursday in the Division III district final. The Raiders defeated No. 9 seed Pymatuning Valley 17-0 in their district semifinal. First pitch is 5 p.m. at South Range.

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com