Softball: Pingry makes history with win over Bound Brook in Somerset County quarterfinals

BERNARDS TOWNSHIP – It took The Pingry School softball team three innings and one trip through the lineup Saturday to get a measure of Bound Brook and its young ace in their Somerset County Tournament quarterfinals contest. Three innings and 10 runs later, the Big Blue made history.

Junior left-hander Casey McKeon fired a six-inning shutout, allowing just two hits, and a walk, hitting a batter and striking out 11, and Ellie Solomon led a 10-hit attack that featured four doubles, finishing 3-for-3 with a two-bagger and two RBIs, and fourth-seeded Pingry advanced to the county semifinals for the first time in program history, blanking the fifth-seeded Crusaders 10-0 in six innings.

Pingry, which has been competing in the SCT since 1985, had been 0-7 in quarterfinals games prior to Saturday’s win, including last year, when it dropped a 6-4 decision to Ridge. But that was without McKeon, who had injured her finger on a comebacker a game prior to last year’s quarterfinals and missed the game. Saturday, she was front and center.

“She’s a bulldog,” said longtime Pingry coach Chip Carver, whose team will visit top-seeded defending champion Watchung Hills in Wednesday’s semifinals. “Any situation you put her in, she’s going to stay focused and she’s going to get the job done. I don’t care what it is or what team you played, she’s going to continue to do it, and she showed it today.”

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McKeon was just that, permitting just four base runners. She hit Sara Thiessen with a second-inning pitch, walked Rachael Gurczecki in the fourth, before allowing a hard-hit single and a stolen base to Isabella Marusiak that gave Bound Brook second and third with one out. But McKeon got a strikeout and a beautiful play by first baseman Claire Sartorius catching a foul pop to end that threat, and Gurczecki’s bloop single in the sixth inning was the only other blemish against the southpaw.

“It’s nice to not be sitting on the bench,” McKeon said. “I had Delaney (Swain) behind the plate at catcher and she called a great game.”

Marusiak, Bound Brook’s sophomore righty, was even better than her counterpart through the first three innings, retiring the game’s first six hitters, before a leadoff single by Solomon in the third. But after her shot to center was bobbled momentarily by Sara Thiessen, the senior recovered and fired a strike to second base to nail Solomon, keeping the bases empty. She retired the next two hitters to keep it scoreless.

But after Bound Brook let its fourth-inning opportunity go by, Pingry was more than ready for its second trip around the lineup, capitalizing on four hits and taking advantage of two errors in the frame to push across four runs. The Big Blue added a five-spot in the fifth, highlighted by RBI doubles from Swain, Genevive Provence and Solomon.

Pingry notched the game-winner in the sixth, getting a leadoff single by Taylor Francis – she finished 3-for-4 with her lone out coming on a long blast to deep leftfield leading off the bottom of the first – and the shortstop went to second on an error. A wild pitch sent her to third, and after a Swain walk, McKeon hit a grounder to third base, with Francis beating the throw home to invoke the 10-run mercy rule and lift Pingry into the semi.

“We knew we had to focus. She was a good change-up pitcher, so we knew every time she threw it, we had to stay back and drive it,” said McKeon, who watched Marusiak allow just six earned runs on 10 hits and two walks, striking out two. “The first innings, we were a little bit early on the ball, but once we started staying back, we were able to drive the ball.”

“We do score runs in bunches, we don’t score one run, we score four or five, because they feed off each other,” Carver said. “The big key was that since she (Marusiak) has a good changeup, the key was to get their heads right. What I’ve really been working on with them is how to adjust in game. We, literally, went through the whole lineup one time, and the second time around we adjusted.”

BOX SCORE

BOUND BROOK (10-3) 000-000 – 0-2-4

PINGRY (9-7) 000-451 – 10-10-0

WP: McKeon (9-4). LP: Marusiak (10-3).

2B: P—Francis, Swain, Provence, Solomon. SB: BB—Marusiak, Gurczecki; P—Swain, Gulati.

Staff writer Simeon Pincus has been covering NJ sports since 1997, and has been on the softball beat since 1999. He can be reached at CourierSoftball@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter/X @SimeonPincus

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: NJ Softball: Pingry makes history with SCT win over Bound Brook