Vote for the Week 5 Longplex Athlete of the Week for Softball

The second half of the season is underway and it’s time for teams to make that postseason push. Week 5 started in April and ended in May and there were terrific performances all week long. Finding nominees for the Week 5 Longplex Player of the Week award wasn’t difficult, but narrowing it down to five continues to be tough. Picking a winner will be downright impossible, which is while we’ll leave it up to our faithful readers to step up and show us who it should be.

There’s only one way to vote for Week 5 Longplex Softball Player of the Week and that’s by reading about the nominees below, then casting your vote in the ballot at the bottom of the page. We do not take email submissions.

You can vote as many times as you’d like between now and when the poll closes Friday. The winner will be announced in next week’s Player of the Week poll.

Longplex Athlete of the Week logo.

Who was the Week 4 Athlete of the Week?

It’s been a tough season for Bay View, but that didn’t stop the program and its community from supporting their own and getting Lexi Fredricks a Player of the Week award.

Last week was a two-player race for the honor, as Fredricks and North Kingstown’s Ella Mezzanotte became the clear favorites early in the week.

The Bengals fans kept pumping out votes and Fredricks ended up with over 58 percent of the total, besting the 28.9 percent garnered by Mezzanote.

Congratulations to Fredricks and the Bay View faithful.

What does the Longplex Athlete of the Week receive?

The prize for Longplex Player of the Week is simple – a big bucket of internet clout.

The award is designed to be an interactive way for the state’s most passionate softball communities to show support for their local stars. We want schools, teams and players to create social media campaigns to drive interest and show how much their community cares about the sport and its players.

When a player wins, the community does as well – and that shows us which parts of the state are truly passionate about high school softball.

How does a player get nominated?

The first step is easy – shine on the field and do everything possible to help your team win. It’s not about just one big game during the week either, it’s about consistent performances in every game you play.

The second step is having coaches report results to the Providence Journal. Reporting softball is easy, especially with the majority of the state using the GameChanger app. We need the coach of the home team to forward the GameChanger report – box score and recap – to the Journal at PJSports@ProvidenceJournal.com by 8 p.m. on the day of games.

If a program does not have game changer, we will need the home team coach to email the following information – final score and score by innings; three star hitters from the winning team and one or two star players from the losing team; pitching stats, if someone throws a good game; and any pertinent information we can use to write a recap.

That information can also be sent to PJSports@ProvidenceJournal.com

All this information will be used in our daily High School Scoreboard story, where we write about all the games played that day.

So now that you have all the information on the award, check out this week’s nominees and cast your vote for the Longplex Softball Player of the Week award.

Here are the Week 5 Nominees for Longplex Athlete of the Week

Gianna Amedeo, North Kingstown Softball

Gianna Amedeo, North Kingstown

It’s been a perfect season so far for the Skippers and last week Amedeo made sure it stayed that way. Amedeo threw five innings of one-hit ball with four strikeouts in NK’s 10-0 win over then Division-II leader Johnston. Saturday, following North’s win over Cranston West, Amedeo threw a complete-game four hit shutout, striking out seven, in a 5-0 win over East Providence.

Gretchen Dombeck, Pilgrim

Dombeck is known for her pitching acumen, but last week she got it done with the bat and her arm. Dombeck went 2-for-2 with two RBI and two runs while throwing six innings of three-hit ball in a win over Bay View on Monday. Against Cumberland two days later, Dombeck went 2-for-2 with two RBI and gave up five hits in the 12-2 win over the Clippers.

Emma Martin, St. Raphael Softball

Emma Martin, St. Raphael

Martin’s been a terrific source of offense for the Saints this spring and she came up big last week. Against Smithfield to start the week, Martin went 4-for-4 and hit a two-run walk-off triple in the 4-3 victory. Things weren’t as dramatic on Wednesday and Martin just flat-out mashed, going 3-for-3 with five RBI and three runs in a 13-0 win over Ponaganset.

Annika Sampson, Lincoln Softball, home run swing

Annika Sampson, Lincoln

Sampson went on a hit parade last week and closed it with her biggest of the season. She had a single and a run in a win over BNS to start the week, then went 3-for-3 with three RBI and three runs in a 15-1 win over Woonsocket. After helping the Lions beat Portsmouth on Thursday, Sampson had herself a Sunday Funday, hitting a three-run home run that brought Lincoln back in a 5-2 win over South Kingstown.

Mia Ruggieri, Portsmouth Softball

Mia Ruggieri, Portsmouth

Ruggieri went up against the top teams in Division II that aren’t Portsmouth and put on a show. She started against Kent County, going 4-for-4 with one home run and three RBI while pitching a complete-game six-hitter with five strikeouts in a 6-1 win. After a tough loss to first-place Lincoln, Ruggieri showed up big on Saturday against Johnston spreading eight hits over seven innings with no earned runs and seven strikeouts in a 4-1 win.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Vote for the 2026 Week 5 Providence Journal Softball Player of the Week