Burlington Twp. captures first sectional title in program history
Falcons soar past Delsea in SJ III championship game
BURLINGTON » Taylor Fitzpatrick knew it as soon as her bat connected with the ball.
She had herself a home run and the Burlington Township softball team was headed for a little history.
Fitzpatrick’s solo shot in the sixth inning opened the floodgates and the Falcons soared past Delsea, 6-1, on Thursday afternoon to win the South Jersey Group III sectional championship.
“It felt great,” said Fitzpatrick, the team’s senior catcher. “I was so anxious the whole game with the crowd being here and everything. I really wanted to get good contact on the ball and that’s what I focused on.”
With the victory, Township (18-3) won a sectional title for the first time in program history and faces the Central Jersey champion — either Steinert or Middletown North — in the state semifinals.
“The team chemistry was key and they worked hard,” coach Nicolette Cannizzaro said. “We had a couple tough games early in the season and we just kept pushing them. One inning at a time, one game at a time and little by little that chemistry kept working well. … If you believe it and if you keep trying, you
have the potential to do it and they did it.”
Perhaps no chemistry is better than that between the catcher Fitzpatrick and the star pitcher Rylee Reid. Working together, Reid conjured up a terrific completegame outing in which she allowed just one run on five hits, walked one and struck out seven.
“She did amazing,” Fitzpatrick said. “She did everything I could ask for it, putting it right where I needed it to be. We made good defensive
plays throughout. Especially against Brooke Clark, we were focusing on keeping it away from her … very, very far away. And then focusing more up in the zone, getting them to pop out or just roll over.”
The Falcons jumped out to a 1-0 lead on the first inning after Morgan Estelow was hit by a pitch and scored on a throwing error.
Delsea right-hander Gianna Dougherty kept Township at bay for the next four innings and the Crusaders
(20-6) tied it at 1-all in the fifth after Izzie Tondo led off with an infield single and scored on Shannon Travers’ single.
Township re-took the lead in the fifth when Maya Patel’s sacrifice fly plated Tyler Douglas and then blew it open in the sixth.
Fitzpatrick struck out in her previous at-bat when Dougherty got her out in front of a change-up, but Fitzpatrick made an adjustment and slammed a 3-2 pitch over the fence in left.
“I was just thinking wait on the pitch and drive right side,” Fitzpatrick said.
The Falcons ended up with
five of their eight hits in the inning as Estelow and Camille Morgan added RBI singles after Sophia Pizzigoni and Marietta Marcovici both reached on singles and Kylie Burden (2-for-2) sacrificed them over.
“We’ve just been focusing on game by game and we’ll take whoever we can get,” Cannizzaro said. “We’ve seen Steinert when we were back in Central, so if we see them again it will be nice to get another opportunity to try to get a win on that one.”
Delsea (20-6) 000 010 0 — 1 5 3 Burlington Twp. (18-3) 100 014 x — 6 8 1 WP: Reid. LP: Dougherty. HR: Fitzpatrick (BT). RBI: Travers (D). Patel, Fitzpatrick, Estelow, Morgan (BT).