Pennsville, Woodstown see seasons come to an end in losses in South Jersey Group I softball semifinals; will be updated

SOUTH JERSEY GROUP I SOFTBALL
WEDNESDAY’S SEMIFINALS
Audubon 16, Woodstown 0
Haddon Twp. 8, Pennsville 2
FRIDAY’S CHAMPIONSHIP
Haddon Twp. at Audubon

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

PENNSVILLE – Beth Jackson was 6 years old when Boston’s Bill Buckner booted that ball against the New York Mets in the 1986 World Series for the error heard ‘round the world. She was probably too young at the time to understand the magnitude of the play, but as she got older and came to learn and love the game the impact of play wasn’t lost on her.

The ghost of that play manifested itself nearly 40 years later Wednesday in Pennsville’s South Jersey Group I softball semifinal game against Haddon Twp. and it had as profound an effect on the team that made it as it did on the Sox.

The two-out error opened the door for a three-run inning that the second-seeded Eagles never quite recovered from in an eventual 8-2 loss. The win sends Haddon Twp. (17-8) to meet top-seeded  Audubon (18-7) Friday for the South Jersey Group I title, while the loss ended one of Pennsville’s winningest seasons ever.

Neither team scored in the first inning and Eagles starting pitcher Savannah Brewer-Palverento got the first two outs of the second, just like Red Sox did on the Mets that fateful 10th inning of Game 6 back in ’86. The Hawks got the next runner on and then Karsyn McCoy hit a ball off the end of the bat that rolled up the first base line.

Pennsville first baseman Makenzie Widener made a play on the ball at the bag and had it in her glove, but it spun out and caromed towards second base. She recovered it, but couldn’t get back to the bag in time to get McCoy. The next two batters, Grace Farah and left-handed third baseman Ariana Turkot, delivered RBI singles and suddenly the Hawks had three unearned runs and the Eagles were down 3-0.

“There was just a lot of spin on it and I couldn’t grab it correctly so I couldn’t get it in time,” Widener said. “I had it in my glove and it just (spun away).”

If you’re any kind of baseball fan it’s hard not to know the Buckner play. The Mets were down to their final strike of being closed out, but stayed alive and the error allowed them to win the game, tie the series and win it in Game 7. Both Jackson and pink-haired Haddon Twp. coach Pam McCabe got the connection when it came up in the post-game conversation.

“We’ve talked all year making mistakes and giving other teams extra outs and whatnot,” Jackson said. “We’re all human, we all make mistakes, it’s picking it back up and they did, but every game you have to make sure you make the plays and if you don’t, you give them the opportunity and they took advantage of it, which is tough.”

McCabe’s choice of hair color was the fulfillment of a promise she made to the players if they got this far in the playoffs. It’ll probably stay in for a couple months now, she said.

“They didn’t think I was going to,” she said. “I showed up today I think it pumped up me and my assistant more than it did them. They’re probably the quietest team I’ve ever coached in my life. 

The Eagles (21-4) did bounce back from that adversity and got within 3-2 when Graillyn Weber’s aggressive base running produced a run in the fourth and Kylie Harris’ sacrifice fly brought home another in the sixth. Weber was confirmed as a member of the Tri-Cape Carpenter Cup team after the game (along with Woodstown’s Ellie Wygand).

Although Brewer-Palverento pitched well for six innings, giving up only three hits and striking out three, Jackson replaced her with Weber to start to seventh inning in the hopes of giving the Hawks a different look. The visitors didn’t blink and erupted for five runs to put it out of reach.

Pitcher Jordan Strauss, Mikayla Callahan, Julie Broderick and Lexi Broderick delivered consecutive hits that drove runs home.

“They’d seen (SBP) four times already, I think they were on their fifth time seeing her,” Jackson explained. “She did an excellent job today with them, so I wanted to give them something else, just change it up a little bit.”

The last out Brewer-Palverento got in the sixth was her 100th strikeout of the season (and 190th for her career), a feat Jackson called “awesome.” The Eagles huddled around their pitcher as they came off the field and it actually confused her.

“I didn’t even know until they said something,” she said. “They all came up on me and I was like ‘What did I do?,’ the game’s not over with, what’s going on.”

The little celebration seemed to spark the Eagles briefly. When they came to the plate Lily Edwards slapped a leadoff single into left field, stole second, moved to third on Weber’s grounder to the right side and scored the Eagles’ second run on Harris’ sacrifice fly.

“We’ve been watching the College World Series and talking about that,” Jackson said. “Lily brought up errors were made in the games and how they have to have a short-term memory and forget about it and go on to the next one. Here they are at the highest level of softball and they make mistakes too and they didn’t give up. You have to stay at it all 21 outs.”

When the 21st out came for the Eagles Wednesday the season came to an end. There were a lot of tears in the outfield when the players gathered for their post-game huddle. Jackson even started to choke up when she reflected on the season they just completed.

“I told them they had nothing to hang their head about,” she said. “They gave it a good fight.”

AUDUBON 16, WOODSTOWN 0: The Wolverines felt ready and excited for the chance to take on the top-seeded Green Wave. They had learned people tell them that under the right set of circumstances they could pull the upset. 

It would take a near perfect game from the Wolverines to pull it off and in the end they fell victim to an 11-run first inning and never recovered.

“It was a shock for sure, but I wouldn’t say it was unexpected,” Woodstown coach Rob Hildebrand said. “We knew how good they were and we knew we were going to find out in the first three innings whether we were going to win that game. I would call it more of coming to fruition what we thought could happen.”

The Green Wave sent 16 batters to the plate in the first. It opened with three straight walks followed by a pair of RBI singles. After a strikeout, the next six batters reached safely extending the lead to 9-0. An error allowed the final two runs of the inning to score.

Audubon added five more runs in the second. 

“Their approach to the plate was by far the best team I’ve faced all year, not even close,” Hildebrand said. “I don’t know that I’ve seen a softball team that their approach, every batter, 1 through 9, probably 90 percent of the base hits against (Woodstown pitcher Leah Clark) were 1-2 or 2-2 counts. She was getting ahead and just couldn’t quite finish. That’s a testament to them. They are literally a fundamentally sound team.”

The Wolverines had two hits in the game, a two-out opposite-field single by Talia Guardascione in the first and Hannah Hitchner’s two-out single as their next-to-last batter in the fourth.