No-hitter lifts Pirates over North
By: Bob Nuse
Kelly Kasper certainly wasn’t going to beat the West Windsor-Plainsboro High North softball team all alone on Saturday. It only seemed like she could have.
Kasper, a freshman for West Windsor-Plainsboro South, did all she could to make sure the Pirates finally picked up their first win of the season. On the mound, the lefty tossed a no-hitter, striking out 13 batters, including the final 10 she faced. At the plate, she also contributed to the cause with her first home run of the season.
Kasper, who has been pitching competitively in district softball tournaments for several years, allowed just two Knight batters to even hit the ball on Saturday, with both of those grounding back to her for outs.
Her pitching, along with a strong offensive performance by the rest of the Pirates, helped the team to a 10-0 win in a game shortened to five innings by the 10-run rule. The win helped South improve to 1-3 after three narrow losses. North fell to 0-3 with the loss.
"I’ve been in a lot of tough situations the past three years playing in the District 12 tournaments," said Kasper, who has pitched no-hitters before but never for the high school team. "And I play with the Wildcats and we’ve played in a lot of tournaments against some tough competition. So even though I’m a freshman, I’ve faced some tough teams before."
Despite Saturday’s game being just her second start at the high school level, Kasper showed few signs of nerves. She walked a pair of batters in the first inning and one in the second, but retired the final 10 batters she faced, all on strikeouts.
The Pirates’ other pitcher also is a freshman, Katy Hubbard. The two have combined to give first-year coach Dee Pasternick a couple of strong options on the mound.
"We’ve got a very young team, but they’re experienced softball players and that helps," said Pasternick, whose team will host Princeton today and Notre Dame on Wednesday. "We start three freshmen and only two seniors. So we’re young, but they’ve played a lot of softball and that helps."
In Saturday’s win, the Pirates scored twice in the first, three more times in the second and then five times in the third to put the game away. Katie Kasper and Amanda Driscoll, the team’s two senior starters, drove in three runs apiece to pace the offense.
The victory helped offset three opening losses that came by a total of six runs. Being such a young team, the Pirates were able to shake those losses off and focus on Saturday’s game.
"We had a shot in all three of the games we played prior to this one," Pasternick said. "We could easily be 4-0 right now instead of 1-3. What has been real nice with these kids is that they haven’t gotten down on themselves with the tough losses. They knew they played well against Hamilton. That was the toughest of the three losses. They kept fighting back.
"In a way it can be tougher because they’re usually not as mature. Having a young team can also be nice because they can be oblivious to the tough losses and they just keep coming back and playing hard."
It helps to have a pitcher with the ability to basically give her fielders the day off. Now, Kasper is simply focused on getting better each time out.
"Last year I didn’t have as good a year as I thought I could have," Kasper said. "I worked pretty hard over the summer to see if I could get better. Most of the players on the other teams are older, so when I’m pitching I try to change things up."
The loss was the third straight to open the season for North, which was just a couple of miscues in the field away from being right in the game.
"We just have to keep working hard," said North coach Jason Petrone, whose team hosts Steinert today at 3:45 p.m. "The girls are working hard, but it only takes a couple plays to make the difference in a game. We made a couple of bonehead plays in the field and that led to some runs for them.
"Other than those couple of plays I was happy with the way the girls played. Their pitcher was real tough and we had a couple chances against her early when she was a little wild. But once she settled in, she was tough on us."
Over the next four years, Kasper figures to be tough on a lot of teams. The Knights certainly got a taste of that on Saturday.