JEFF GRANIT staff Above, Edison’s Derek Gianakas takes his lead off first base while Spotswood’s Eric Hines delivers a pitch during the GMC Senior All-Star game on June 9 in East Brunswick. At left, St. Joseph’s Santo Maertz fires the ball to first from his shortstop position.
The Greater Middlesex Conference’s top graduating baseball and softball players had one last chance to shine last week in the annual Senior All-Star Games.
The top local baseball players converged on East Brunswick Vo-Tech’s diamond for what stacked up to be a competitive battle, but was anything but.
Pitchers Mike Bujalkowski of St. Joseph, Carlton Smith of Piscataway, Ed Kania of Dunellen and Billy Alec of Edison combined for seven no-hit innings to lead the Red and Gold stars past their Blue and White counterparts, 11-1. It wasn’t until the eighth inning that the Blue and White squad broke up the no-hitter bid, when Monroe’s Craig Mazor, who had the lowest batting average on the team, beat out an infield single. Carteret’s Kevin Cherepski added another hit later in the inning, but that was all their squad could muster.
The Blue and White run came in the fifth when Cardinal McCarrick’s Andrew Rios scored Cherepski with a sacrifice fly after Cherepski reached on an infield error, stole second, and then advanced to third on another error.
Meanwhile, the Red and Gold offense was cruising right along, and blew the game open with an eight-run second inning, highlighted by St. Joseph’s Santo Maertz’s three-run home run. They later added single runs in the fourth, sixth and ninth innings, but with the way their pitchers were throwing, those runs were simply icing on the cake.
Over in Edison, at the Edison Angels Complex, the top senior softball players were playing to a similar result.
The Red and Gold team was dominant in this contest as well, topping their White and Blue counterparts, 9-1, behind the pitching of Woodbridge’s Marissa Sankowski, South Amboy’s Keryn Rosenberger and St. Peter’s Emma Nichols, who combined to allow just seven hits.
Offensively, the Red and Gold team got on the board in the third inning, when South Brunswick’s Pam Weiss scored on a groundout after reaching on an error.
In the fourth inning, Vicki Lanza of Edison lashed an RBI single just before Woodbridge’s Alex Velez knocked in two more runs with a double.
The Blue and White squad scored their only run in the third inning on a Amy Decibus (Carteret) RBI single.
But the Red and Gold team put it away in the eighth when it scored five runs on a series of hits. Lanza, Velez and Rosenberger each had RBI singles during the rally.