Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Austintown Fitch’s Sydnie Watts (5) is mobbed by teammates after their 3-0 win over Lebanon in the state semifinals at Akron Firestone Park. Watts threw a no-hitter in the win.

AKRON — In Austintown Fitch’s first state semifinal appearance since 1993, a historic moment deserved an equally momentous performance.

Like she has all season, sophomore phenom Sydnie Watts rose to the occasion.

Watts delivered a complete-game no-hitter on Friday at Firestone Stadium in Akron, leading the Falcons to a 3-0 victory over Lebanon and onto Saturday’s Division I state championship game.

“One thing about Sydnie is that she’s going to get stronger as the game goes on,” Fitch head coach Steve Ward said. “She’s not going to shrink from a moment. She’s built for big moments. This is why she trains and this is why she goes across the country (playing travel ball) for moments like this.”

It was Watts’ seventh no-hitter of the season. She finished with 12 strikeouts and two walks were the only blemishes on her performance. But she didn’t do it alone.

The Falcons (21-0-2) had a handful of key defensive plays that helped keep the Warriors off the bases, including Morgan Roby jumping up to snag a line drive down the third base line out of the air and second baseman Caitlin Mitchell diving across the scorching turf to stop a grounder before tossing it to Abby Toth at first base for a groundout.

“I didn’t know I had the no-hitter (during the game),” Watts said. “I feel like I didn’t know because the defense did a lot of the work. That’s the reason I feel like I had the no-hitter — because of our defense working so hard, especially Caitlin Mitchell during that fourth inning, making every single out. I feel like that was really big contributing to the no-hitter.”

Watts’ contributions weren’t just limited to the circle. She had an RBI bunt single in the first inning that scored Ayla Ray after Ray’s lead-off double for Fitch’s first run of the game.

“It got us the lead — that’s all I was trying to do,” Watts said. “I knew I had to do whatever I could just to get the ball in play so Ayla could score from third base.”

At this point, what Watts is able to do in the circle on a game-by-game basis isn’t a surprise to coaches and players across the Mahoning Valley and around northeast Ohio, but Lebanon had the chance to experience it for the first time.

“We knew she was really good coming in,” said Warriors head coach Brian Kindell. “We were aware of that and we had scouted her. She probably laid off the rise ball a little more than we had seen previously and went to more screwball. Everything we thought coming in — she backed that up. She’s the real deal.”

Ashley Simko, who went 0-1 in two at bats against Watts, echoed Kindell’s sentiments.

“We were looking inside, but we were just still late on it,” Simko said. “We just didn’t quite time it up. We were stringing some hits, or at least getting contact at the end and getting some ground balls, but we just couldn’t find any gaps.”

After Watts scored Ray for Fitch’s first run of the game, Samantha Severn ended the inning with another RBI that scored pinch runner Rachel Spalding.

The rest of the way, Fitch added two hits from Mitchell, but was only able to add to its run tally in the fourth inning.

Kylie Folkwein started things off with a lead-off double, and then Severn had her second RBI of the game in the next at bat, reaching third on a pair of Lebanon throwing errors.

“I came into the game feeling like I knew what I could do,” Severn said of her two RBIs. “My teammates definitely helped me out by encouraging me. Knowing that we needed those runs to score was also a big part of making me calm at bat. I knew we had to get something down.”

Ward called three runs the “magic number” for the Falcons in each game they play.

“We feel if we hit three runs, we’re going to be a very difficult team to beat (with Watts pitching),” he said. “So any way we can get the runs. These girls understand the gameplan and they execute the gameplan.”

Now comes the big one, as the Falcons will face Whitehouse Anthony Wayne for the Division I state championship today (Saturday) at 3 p.m. back at Firestone Stadium in Akron.

The Generals (28-3) defeated Watkins Memorial 2-1 in the first semifinal game on Friday.

“It’s going to be us coming out and playing for each other, playing for our school and playing for our community,” Ward said. “We keep those things first. So if we’re able to do that (Saturday), come in and as we’ve always said, make big moments small — I like our chances, I really do. I think these girls believe in themselves and they’re not afraid of the moment.”