By Lynn WorthyLOWELL -- UMass Lowell softball players Julie Brodie and Laurie Tanguay have gone from rivals to roommates to champions.

Brodie, a versatile junior catcher/infielder from Chelmsford, and Tanguay, a power-hitting junior infielder from Lowell, played pivotal roles in the River Hawks' first-ever Northeast-10 Conference Tournament championship on Sunday, catapulting UMass Lowell into the NCAA Northeast Regional Tournament starting today.

In Sunday's decisive game, a 3-2 victory against Merrimack College, Brodie (two hits) and Tanguay (one hit) accounted for three of the River Hawks four hits and two of the three runs (Brodie scored a run and Heather Ross scored while running for Tanguay after she doubled).

The two former Merrimack Valley Conference All-Conference players butted heads on the softball diamond as well as the basketball court before arriving at UMass Lowell.
"I always give her a hard time because she robbed me of many hits with her glove," Brodie says.

The duo, both three-year starters who are also roommates, now share the experience of being part of one of the most remarkable runs in River Hawks softball history.

A pair of losses against Merrimack College on April 20, left the River Hawks reeling from a six-game losing skid, and hopes for the NCAA tournament were shrinking. That was before UML won 13 of its last 16 games capped by Sunday's win.

Brodie, who is hitting .301 and leads the team in on base percentage, has a simple explanation for the surge.

"Our bats came alive," she says. "We knew we had them all year, but they finally came to life."

UML has outscored opponents 59 to 30 in their last 16 games.

Tanguay, who transferred in as a freshman after one year at UMass Amherst, has been a large part of that offensive spark. She is among the top 10 in the conference in runs batted in (30), home runs (6) and total bases (70).

The former three-sport captain at Lowell High has been putting up the numbers while playing with a shoulder that has come out of its socket several times and will require surgery following the River Hawks' season.

She was told in a lot of "doctor terms" that she had suffered damage to the ligaments in her shoulder while sliding at the end of last season, and if she chose to play this season without surgery she'd have to deal with limited range of motion and plenty of pain.

"It's sometimes frustrating because I want to be 100 percent for them especially since we made it so far," she says. "I'm definitely glad I could be a part of it and contribute something."

Despite the injury, Tanguay has played in 47 of UMass Lowell's 48 games.

Hebert playing with pain Tanguay isn't the only gritty former Red Raiders standout to battle through injury for the River Hawks this year. Freshman Katie Hebert has been playing all season with a broken bone in her foot.

The injury was sustained during the summer, but it wasn't discovered until the fall as she continued to play. The problem could require off-season surgery, but it hasn't stopped Hebert from starting 40 games and hitting at a .267 clip.

Hebert is no stranger to title runs, having keyed the Lowell High state championship run as a junior pitcher in 2005 -- the same year her older sister Tabitha was co-captain of the UMass Lowell softball team -- but this one is even more special to the younger Hebert.

"This is more exciting because it's at a high level," she says, adding that Tabitha was one of the first people she called after the River Hawks won the NE-10 tournament.

Other locals on that helped bring home the first NE-10 title in UMass Lowell history included former Greater Lowell Tech standout Jill McAllister and Burlington's pitcher-catcher combination of Kristen Mahoney and Melissa Hanafin.

The eighth-seeded River Hawks take on NE-10 Conference rival and top seed LeMoyne College in today's opening round of the double-elimination NCAA Northeast Regional in Brookville, N.Y.