Thursday, May 1, 2008

By Rich Barton
NJS.com Staff Writer

BAYONNE – With a senior-dominated lineup, the Holy Family Academy softball team cruised through the regular racking up one blowout win after another, but several defensive miscues led to its first loss of the season last week against High Tech. Since then, the Falcons have had nothing to do but practice and work on making sure that the meltdown against High Tech never happens again.

The true test would come in the Falcons’ next game, which also happened to be their most important of the season. They were facing North Bergen in a battle of the only two unbeaten teams in the HCIAA-Coviello Division. Since it is the only meeting between the two teams in the regular season and with Bayonne scoring a 3-1 win over St. Dominic Academy, the winner of this game was going to earn the top seed in the HCIAA-Coviello Division Tournament. The Falcons took an early lead again as they did against High Tech. But this time the ending was different as the Falcon defense rose to the occasion.

Holy Family’s Grace Keller manufactured a run on her own in the first inning. She made sure it stood up with a consistent pitching performance. Her defense played error-free ball behind her, including two nice plays from second baseman Laney Fiuza as the Falcons made its mark as the team to beat in the HCIAA-Coviello Division with a 5-0 win on Wednesday at Gorman Field in Bayonne.

“We were maybe a little too confident and the loss to High Tech brought us back down to earth,” said Keller. “We talked about the High Tech game and we’ve focused that much more on not losing again.”

Keller led off the bottom of the first with a single and moved to second on a slap hit by Fiuza. The senior then took off on a delayed steal for third and the throw went into left field, allowing Keller to score and the Falcons to strike first.

From there it was an intriguing pitcher’s duel between Keller and North Bergen’s Carla Arismendi. Keller, who has started since the first game of her freshman year, retired 14 of the first 15 batters she faced by changing speeds effectively.

The Bruins did not know what to expect after having the luxury of program’s all-time leader in wins and strikeouts and four-year starter, Tiara Smith, depart to graduation. But Arismendi has filled the void and proved she is already among the top pitchers in Hudson County. The freshman had a stretch between first and fourth innings where she retired 11 straight batters. But with one swing of the bat, the Falcons got some cushion for Keller to work with.

Amanda Coletta slugged an Arismendi fastball to right-center for a sure-fire triple. The senior tried to score on the play and the throw had her beat easily at the plate. But the ball was bobbled and Coletta snuck in to give the Falcons a 2-0 lead.

“I had two strikes on me already, so whatever pitch I got I was going to try and make contact,” said Coletta. “We wanted this game so bad. This shows that we can compete and beat any team in the county if we’re playing our best.”

North Bergen had a chance to get back in the game using some small ball to create its only offensive threat of the game. Jocelyn Cabrera drew a two-out walk followed by a single from Yamile Cano and an infield single from Yelissa Mendoza to load the bases. That brought up North Bergen’s fastest player, Ashley Heredia to the plate. She hit a slow roller to second with Mendoza crossing over the ball to make it an even tougher play for Fiuza. She fielded the ball cleanly and tossed to first, getting Heredia in a bang-bang play to end the inning.

“That play was a big one,” said North Bergen Tom Eagleson. “We would have scored a run on the play and I might have tried to score the runner all the way from second base. The bottom line is that we didn’t hit. (Grace) Keller pitched well and they played great defense. You can’t beat the better teams on your schedule without hitting the ball and we didn’t hit the ball well enough to win today.”

Danielle Dundas put the game away for Holy Family in the bottom of the sixth. Her three-run blast to left-center scored Fiuza and Caitlin Veverka to make it 5-0. Keller followed with a 1-2-3 seventh to complete the shutout.

Keller allowed four hits, walked one, struckout seven, and went 2-3 at the plate to boost Holy Family (14-1, 12-0 HCIAA-Coviello) into sole possession of first place in the league.

Arismendi took the loss for North Bergen (11-4, 9-1 HCIAA-Coviello). She allowed six hits, had six K’s, and did not walk a batter. Cano had two hits for the Bruins, while Mendoza and Johanna Gonzalez had the others.

The win put Holy Family in good position to get back to the HCIAA-Coviello final, where the Falcons will look to win their second title in three years.

“We want to win the county title again and winning this game was a big step towards our goal,” added Keller. “You can’t give a team extra outs to work with and we didn’t give North Bergen any. I’m confident with the defense behind me. They played great today. I just had to hit my spots and let them do the work. The High Tech loss was a wake-up call for us. We have only two weeks before the (HCIAA-Coviello) playoffs and then the state tournament starts. We want to go undefeated until then and take it one game at a time."

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