The No. 4 Red Eddies erased a decade-and-a-half’s worth of pain Thursday with a 13-1 victory over fifth-seeded Oxford Hills in six innings in an Eastern A quarterfinal. Sarah Hammond picked up the win in the circle.

“They’ve worked hard,” Edward Little coach Elaine Derosby said. “They’ve pulled together. Our goal at the beginning of the season was you want to be playing your best in June and it’s June and we’re playing our best and they’re continuing to work hard because they know that no matter how good you are you can always get better.”

Hammond was on the mound in last year’s quarterfinal game as a sophomore when Edward Little came up just short of upsetting second-seeded Showhegan in a quarterfinal. The junior tossed six innings of three-hit ball Thursday, striking out six. She allowed two baserunners over the final five frames.

“That was my first really big game last year, which came as a really big surprise because I wasn’t expecting it,” Hammond said of starting against Skowhegan. “I did really well that game and so I really built off that throughout the season and I knew if I came in with the same mentality I took to that playoff game the whole season I’d have a really good season and I have. I’ve had a great team behind me.”

The Red Eddies (13-4) entered Thursday’s contest having scored five runs in their previous four postseason appearances dating back to 2010 (they missed the playoffs in 2012. They exploded for seven runs in the sixth inning against the Vikings (11-6).

Olivia Jensen opened the inning reaching first on one of Oxford Hills’ six errors, and ended the game with an RBI single to right-center as Edward Little brought 10 batters to the plate.

“EL played a great game today,” Oxford Hills coach Cynthia Goddard said. “From the get-go, it wasn’t in the cards for us today, but EL played well. They played well defensively. They hit well. We didn’t really answer with anything. All credit to them.”

Sandwiched between Jensen’s two at-bats were seven base hits off reliever Erika Whitman. Calli Murray, Kylie Bureau and Hammond collected RBI singles, while Jordyn Reynolds added a two-run double that one-hopped the fence in center field.

“We were hitting the ball really well,” Edward Little senior left fielder Hannah Smith said. “The energy just kept growing with each hit and once the energy’s really high in the dugout, you hit better. There was so much energy and it felt just so good. We’re all so excited to play Saturday.”

The Red Eddies finished with 16 hits. Emmy Lashua went a perfect 4-for-4 at the plate and Jensen finished 3-for-4 with a double. Four Eddies collected multiple hits. Smith went 1-for-3 with an RBI double in the fourth.

Long before the celebrating in the Edward Little dugout, the Eddies found themselves trailing 1-0 after a half-inning after two errors allowed Oxford Hills’ leadoff hitter, Anna Winslow, to score.

Edward Little responded with 13 unanswered — one in the first, three in the second, two in the fourth and seven in the sixth.

“We just have to go with it,” Derosby said. It’s a seven-inning game. We can’t let one set of at-bats determine what the rest of the game is going to be and we knew we had our offense coming up and we were going to be all set.”

The win was Edward Little’s first at home since 1999.

The Red Eddies are back on the road for their semifinal contest against top-ranked Messalonskee on Saturday. In their only regular-season meeting, Messalonskee defeated EL 5-2.