Griswold — With Fitch leadoff hitter, shortstop and senior captain Jackie Lewis not feeling well Friday, having been taken to the hospital just prior to the game, coach Kate Prpich gathered her team for one final pep talk before the Eastern Connecticut Conference championship.

Be good to each other. You can do this.

Prpich's oratory was met with tears. Lots of them.

"At first I cried and a couple other people cried," Fitch all-state pitcher Caroline Taber said. "And coach said, 'You guys are being a bunch of girls.' Then I realized Jackie wouldn't want that. Jackie would want us to come out and win.

"... Without coach and Coop and Mr. P (assistant coaches Arielle Cooper and Bob Peruzzotti), I would be off my rocker. They calm me down. Sometimes they tell me, 'Don't even bring your emotions to the field, Caroline.'"

It was behind Taber's third gem in three days, though, that the top-seeded Fitch High School softball team won its first ECC tournament title since 2008, holding on to edge resourceful Stonington, the No. 7 seed, 2-1.

Fitch (22-0), which lost last year's ECC final to Norwich Free Academy in its only defeat of the season on the way to a Class L state championship, was even more on edge in trying to avenge that defeat.

The Falcons clipped No. 8 Lyman Memorial 5-4 in nine innings in Wednesday's ECC quarterfinal game after falling behind 4-0. Taber pitched 6.1 innings of scoreless relief. She then pitched a two-hitter in a 6-0 semifinal win over NFA on Thursday and a three-hitter, all three of them infield singles, to win the title.

Taber was named the game's Most Outstanding Player.

"She's a very strong athlete, a very strong kid, but (three games in three days) wears on you," Prpich said of Taber. "That's why I took her aside before the sixth and said, 'This going to be the hardest three outs.' I knew how bad she wanted it. I told her don't give in. I'm proud of her for not giving in.

"She's up for it. It speaks to what a competitor she is."

Fitch took a 2-0 lead in the third inning on an RBI triple by Jo Hobert and an RBI single by Taber.

After a leadoff single by Fitch's Olivia Knotts to start the fourth, however, Stonington freshman Trinity Lennon, also pitching her third game in three days, retired the final nine hitters she faced. Lennon finished with a six-hitter for the Bears (17-6).

It was her strong effort that gave Stonington an opportunity to get back in the game.

The Bears, who knocked off No. 2 Wheeler and No. 3 Waterford, scored an unearned run in the fourth off Taber when Mallory Kane singled and later came home on an RBI groundout by Cam Dreher.

Stonington had its best chance to tie the score or take the lead in the sixth. Kane and Abby Blanchard, the Bears' speedy No. 1 and 2 hitters, put together back-to-back infield singles with one out. Dreher bunted the runners over, placing them on second and third for cleanup hitter Rhianna Maynard.

Taber, heeding Prpich's advice about getting through the sixth, had a little extra pop on her first pitch to Maynard, throwing the pitch for a strike. She then induced a ground ball to second base to end the inning.

Taber finished with eight strikeouts and one walk and got a leaping catch at short from Hobert, who moved over from short to fill in for Lewis, whom Prpich said was doing well later Friday.

"I respect Fitch. Their players are older. You've just got to hit your spots," Stonington's Lennon said. "... This whole tournament, we all just connected."

"I can't say enough about the kids on our team," Stonington coach Ann-Marie Houle said. "When we played Fitch last year, it was ugly, to be honest. Today, they had pride in wearing 'Bears' on the front (of their uniforms). ... I'm almost speechless with (Lennon). She didn't have her best game last night and she came back for this."

v.fulkerson@theday.com

Twitter: @vickieattheday