Despite lost season, ND bullish on future
LAWRENCE » It has not exactly been smooth sailing for the Notre Dame High School softball team ever since the controversial firing of legendary Hall of Fame head coach Artie Kearns four years ago.
Although Notre Dame managed to produce at least 18 wins in each of the last three seasons to go along with a pair of league titles and an appearance in a Mercer County Tournament final, other problems arose that need not be rehashed here.
This led to the promotion last season of former assistant Marty Schafer to become Notre Dame’s third head coach in four years.
With All-Colonial Valley Conference players Rachel Carney (now at Colgate University) and Rachel Zingerman (Rhode Island University) leading the way, the Irish did manage to post a 19-7 record last spring.
On the other hand, it was supplanted by state champion Hightstown as the winner of the Colonial Division and was bounced early from the MCT in a 5-0 loss to Robbinsville.
With major graduation losses and once again a lack of dominating lock-down pitching, this year looked like it wasn’t going to get a whole lot better despite a handful of solid seniors.
Seniors who did not get to play this year because of the coronavirus pandemic were center fielder Emelia Bercaw, third baseman Rachel Doan, catcher Emily Reinstein, and outfielders Noelle Geroso, Emily Mozgai and Marissa
Weber.
Bercaw is headed to play softball in the fall at Rowan University. Reinstein, meanwhile, is going to Stony Brook and would have been one of the premier catchers in the area this season.
But that’s all in the past. All you can do at this point is look ahead and Notre Dame will return a handful of projected starters from the recently aborted season. These include four current juniors in pitcher/shortstop Ashley Giampolo, power hitting first baseman Jordyn Wacker, outfielder Sarah Dunn and pitcher Audrey Ihlfield.
This is a decent starting point, but truth be told there’s just not a whole lot of other talent currently in the school. Fortunately, from an Irish viewpoint, the future could be looking up because Notre Dame appears to have all kinds of help on the way.
“We’re very excited about the freshmen class we have coming in,” said Schafer. “It has three pitchers and catching. Right now we are anticipating 14 freshmen joining the program. This year we only had two.”
Another plus Schafer sees in the near future is the fact the incoming freshmen class has plenty of speed.
In his first year at the Irish helm Schafer showed he prefers an aggressive running game with plenty of small ball. The result was Notre Dame piled up 184 stolen bases, including a staggering and area-leading 64 by Carney.
Whether he can pull it off remains to be seen, but another huge addition to the program would occur if Schafer can get older brother and recently retired Dave Schafer to join the staff.
Dave Schafer is one of the truly great coaches in the history of the Delaware Valley. The head coach at first Bishop Conwell and then St. Hubert’s, Dave Schafer compiled 510 wins and 19 Philadelphia Catholic League championships during his storied career.
“If I can get Dave to join us we will have like 520 victories between the two of us,” said Marty Schafer with a laugh. “He has 510 of them and I have 10.”
With Kearns running the show, Notre Dame established itself as one of the top programs in the state with two state titles in the always rugged Parochial A bracket. Kearns also guided the Irish to two other state finals.
In an effort to regain that former status, Schafer is attempting to put together as difficult a schedule as he can. This became even more possible when the Colonial Valley Conference recently adopted a new schedule whereby softball teams will play 13 league games next year as opposed to 19.
Stay tuned. Next year the team will be very young, but a return to prominence could be in the works.