By: Carolyn M. Hartko
The Monroe High School girls’ softball team barely got their toes wet in this year’s NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III Tournament. The ninth seeded Lady Falcons traveled to eighth seeded Monmouth Regional where a 6-2 loss in the opening round bounced them from the tourney this past Tuesday.
"They weren’t any great shakes, just an average team," Falcon head coach Keith Hudak said of the CJ III opponent. "They went into the states basically with the same record that we had. Now they are 10-10, and we are 9-11."
The Falcons grabbed the lead first with a run in the top of the second inning, and added another in the next. But the home team came back with three runs in the bottom of the third, and they never trailed after that. Allyson Felton posted the only RBI for the Falcons. The other run was the result of a Monmouth error.
That loss followed an even more disappointing 10-8 loss to South River on Monday. The Falcons had an aggressive first inning, scoring five runs in the opening stanza. The Lady Rams picked up one in the second, but two more by the Falcons in the third seemed to have put Monroe up for good at 7-1. Junior second baseman Jill Chen led the charge with a two-run double, and classmate Emma Bossard hit an RBI single.
Then a dramatic turn-around in the game occurred in the fourth inning when a nine-run rally by the Rams stunned the Falcons. Christina Decorso paced South River’s offense with two doubles and two RBI on a 3-for-4 day.
Monroe played both of the above games with a disadvantage. Two key players were absent for disciplinary reasons. Hudak felt that having his regular starting line-up intact would have made a difference in both outcomes.
And while it was upsetting to be ousted from the state tournament so quickly, the loss to South River, a team that plays its regular schedule in the Blue Division, may have cost Monroe (a White Division team) a decent seed in the upcoming Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament. The Rams got the 13th seed, and beat 20th seeded Spotswood to advance to this weekend’s Super Saturday.
The four games in the next round of the GMCT will be played that day at the softball complex at South Plainfield High School.
In contrast, Monroe was seeded 14th, and they drew 19th seeded South Amboy in the first round. The winner of that game, postponed to today (Friday) by rain, will face the number three seed, South Plainfield, on Saturday.
"These losses definitely put a damper on the end of the season," Hudak said. "South River got seeded ahead of us. Now we’re playing a South Amboy team which only has two losses on the season, even though they’re in a lower division. (Monday), they played Woodbridge, a Group IV school, and they 10-runned them. So, we’ll have to work hard for it try to make our way through."
According to Hudak, a number of teams, including ninth seeded Old Bridge, the defending champs, could end up as the 2004 GMC Champion.
"There’s an awful lot of good teams, a lot of parity, in the county," Hudak said. "And I think if you were a betting person, you could probably take a look at 10 to 12 teams that could win the county tournament right now.
