By: Rich Fisher
Just call it 21 innings of torment.
That’s what the tournament season came down to for the Monroe High softball team, which had its season come to an abrupt end with extra-inning losses in the Greater Middlesex Conference and Central Jersey Group III tournaments.
On Saturday, the 16th-seeded Falcons played a nerve-wracking, 12-inning affair against J.P. Stevens in the GMCT before dropping a 1-0 decision to the state’s No. 5 team.
On Tuesday, ninth-seeded Monroe headed for the shore and again went overtime before dropping a 3-2 decision to eighth-seeded Manchester in the CJ III tournament.
"Saturday’s game with Stevens was a heartbreaker," coach Keith Hudak said after the Manchester loss. "Today was not a heartbreaker because we didn’t play as well as we should have. I thought we were the better team, and we let the game extend too long.
"We had five hits against Stevens, we only had three against Manchester. I will say we had some balls hit hard at people, but you still can’t win with just three hits."
Monroe let two leads slip away against Manchester. Jill Chen drove in Lisa Cosentino in the first inning to make it 1-0 before the hosts tied it. The Falcons reclaimed the lead on Mai’Lee Paselio’s home run before Manchester tied it again in the fourth.
It stayed deadlocked until the bottom of the ninth, when a difficult situation arose. A Manchester batter fouled a 2-1 pitch off her face and was bleeding from the nose. Play was held up for over 10 minutes while she was looked at.
"The most important thing was the girl’s safety," Hudak said. "But they had her off the field, trying to patch her up and get her back in the game, and there should have been a replacement batter."
Hudak finally spoke to the base umpire, who got things moving. Manchester ended up putting in a replacement hitter anyway, and Brittany Salvatore walked her on two extremely close pitches. One bunt and one error later, the winning run scored.
"It’s kind of ironic," Hudak said. "In some ways it was why we lost games we should have won earlier in the year. I just felt bad for the girls. I thought they deserved better."
When asked if it might have been a letdown from the J.P. Stevens game, Hudak said "I don’t know, it could have been. We just didn’t play well."
As opposed to Saturday at South Plainfield High, when the Falcons made all the plays against Stevens but could not score. Monroe’s best chance came in the 11th, when Chen doubled and tried to stretch it to a triple with one out.
"We took a gamble, wanted to give it a shot," Hudak said. "If she makes it, you can score on a passed ball, an error, a fly ball. It just didn’t happen.
"You have to give Stevens credit. That was probably the most picture-book relay I’ve ever seen. We could take that to a clinic and make money on it."
Monroe also had leadoff batters reach base three times and had runners on second and third with two outs, but could not get anyone home against Becky Garibotto. Garibotto started the winning rally with a double and a pinch-runner scored on Caitlyn Seamster’s single.
"The difference between Saturday and Tuesday is that Saturday, J.P. Stevens won the game," Hudak said. "Today, we lost the game. And that’s a whole different feeling."

