It’s been a long time since the Marlboro softball team was in the state playoffs.

The Dukes finished Section 9 runner-up in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 season. The Dukes regained the sectional championship last year, but the continuing pandemic caused the state tournament to be canceled.

Not this year, as the top-seeded Dukes defeated their northern neighbors, the seventh-seeded Highland Huskies, 4-1, on Friday morning to win their second straight Section 9 Class B championship.

“It’s redeeming, almost, in a way because we weren’t able to quite get it freshman year,” Marlboro pitcher Ava DelSalto said. “But knowing that we are able to do it now is redeeming in a way now.”

It’s their first trip to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association subregionals since 2017, when the Dukes advanced to the regional finals before falling to Section 11 Babylon. They had almost a week off before they travel to Lakeland High School on Thursday to face the winner of Saturday’s Section 1 championship game between Albertus Magnus and Rye Neck.

“I’m really excited to play (in the state tournament),” shortstop Kasey Conn said. “We’re going to play our hardest and we know if we bring out bats, we could win any game.”

But in order to get there, they had to cool off the seventh-seeded Huskies, who knocked off No. 2 Spackenkill in an eighth-inning game on May 23 and then routed No. 3 Burke Catholic on Wednesday to advance to the title game.

They beat Highland, 21-0, on April 20 at Highland High School, and 12-0 in Marlboro.

Saturday’s was a tighter contest, with the game tied 1-1 in the fifth inning, after Maggie VanValkenburg singled home Lexi Winters with the Huskies’ first run over the Dukes all season.

Up until that point, Highland pitcher Alexa Pavese had only allowed a manufactured run in the first inning, and successfully worked around single baserunners in the second, third and fourth innings.

“Alexa’s amazing,” Highland coach Kathelene Canosa said. “she’s a freshman and she’s going to take her lumps and she’s got to learn from her mistakes the second time up. We played them and she left a couple of fat pitches, but today we were like, ‘we’re keeping it down.’ We didn’t give them anything. They earned it.”

After the Huskies tied the game, the Dukes responded immediately with three runs in the bottom of the fifth.

As usual, Birkenstock started things off with a one-out single and then stole second base. Ella Leduc followed with a single. Birkenstock scored to give Marlboro the lead when VanValkenburgh was unable to field the ball cleanly. Conn hit a booming triple to score Leduc, and then scored on Emmie-May Cabrera’s fielder’s choice.

“That was huge, and the girls when they came off the field, they knew it; I didn’t have to say anything,” Marlboro coach Ray Leduc said. “They were like, ‘we need to score runs.’ We still had more opportunities, even in later innings.”

Del Salto, meanwhile, worked around two base runners in the sixth inning and then struck out the first two in the seventh. But when VanValkenburgh grounded to Conn to end the game, DelSalto jumped in the air as the ball hit first baseman Carly Correa’s glove to record the final out, clinching the championship.

“I was like ‘we won’,” DelSalto said. “We won and my arm can rest. I was getting work done with the trainer every inning when I was pitching.”

She’ll have six days left before having to take the circle again to start what the Dukes hope will be a successful state tournament run.

“We’re bringing it home,” DelSalto said. “I really think we’ve got a good team. I am confident in what our abilities are, and I really think we can bring home the win.”