Deck records 4-hit shutout as Robbinsville wins
ROBBINSVILLE >> On paper, this year’s Robbinsville softball team has a whole new look, with a host of new players and a brand new coach.
Steinert was the first to get a taste of this new edition of the Ravens and, unfortunately for the Spartans, found it an almost exact duplicate of the old version as Robbinsville used great pitching, stellar defense, speed on the bases and timely hitting to defeat Steinert on Wednesday, 2-0.
The Robbinsville programseems to produce front line pitching as easily as New Jersey farmers produce corn, and Wednesday it was senior SamDeck who stepped into the circle and shut down the Steinert offense, recording a shutout on only four hits.
“I was a pitcher myself so I like calling pitches,” Robbinsville’s new head coach Lisa Rich said.“With our catcher we had a nice flowgoing. It’s important that (Sam) trust me and that I trust her to throw a pitch.”
Deck only struck out four but she kept Steinert hitters off balance all gameand was content to let her defense do the heavy lifting. It was, in fact, a great defensive play by third baseman Felicia Schumacher that stifled Steienrt’s most serious scoring threat.
After the Spartans’ Courtney Danser and Grace Sperrazza led off the fourth inning with back to back singles, Shumacher was able to turn two when she gobbled up a slow grounder, raced to touch the bag at third and then fired to first for the second out.
A batter later, Madison Balke drove a ball to right field, but Robbinsville’s Theresa Demkovitz chased it down with the help of a strong cross wind to end the threat.
Steinert only got two other runners to second base, and both times it was Deck who snuffed out the rallies by handling a grounder to the circle in the first and picking up a strikeout for the final out in the fifth.
Robbinsville is starting three freshmen at the top of its batting order, all of them veterans of Robbinsville Little League’s World Series Champions. That trio wasted no time in producing its first run as ChelseaManto led off the bottomof the first with a walk, moved to third on Shea Walsh’s ground out and a wild pitch and then scored on a hard single to left by Sara Mazalewski.
The Ravens picked up another run in the second after Sara Motusesky hit a ball too deep in the hole at short to be handled, moved to second on a single by Shelby Adamowsky and scored on Manto’s two out single.
Mantoimpressed at the plate, going 1-for-2 with awalk, a run scored and an RBI and looked good in the field where she showed good range at shortstop. She also showed remarkable speed on the base paths, most notably in her final at bat, when she was thrown out at first by only half a step on a comebacker to the pitcher.
“It was nice to see them come out and do a good job,” Rich said of the freshmen at the top of her lineup. “I know all the girls want to win. I expect that they are going to work hard and we’ll see how far we can go.”
For Steinert, it was another frustrating loss for a talented teamthat still seems to be trying to find its footing.
“I told the girls that they have to realize that even though it would be great to pick up the rhythm from where we left off last year, we lost four quality players from that team,” Steinert head coach Jeannie Ruppert said.“We are going to have to see which players on this team will be the leaders.”