Township softball finishes season, looking forward to '09

Four players will graduate from Brick Township's softball team that had a wild ride in a 10-15 season, but the coach believes enough team members will come back to help the team overcome some of the pitfalls.

The biggest one? Hitting.

"But even when we scored, we'd find a way to lose," said Jerry Caci, completing his first season as head coach after serving as assistant under Mike Fletcher, who stepped down to pursue a national academic program for social studies teachers. "Other games, our hitting was not as good.

"We had no consistent hitter, not enough to do damage," said Caci. Only two batters just broke .300 averages, including shortstop Joey Afflito and first baseman/outfielder Heather Leone.

Afflito graduates with center fielder Starri Stark, catcher Brittany Morgan and first baseman Brianna Woska.

Six others return and could remedy the hitting situation, but a new problem looms: no proven player to replace Afflito at shortstop.

"It's wide open for that spot, and that's a big key," said Caci, who has a few prospects on the junior varsity and a freshman team that did well.

It might mean that sophomore second baseman Emma Erbig would move over. "That's always a possibility," said Caci.

But the good news is the return of two solid pitchers in Heather Figula and Ronnie Wilenta. Figula had a 3.67 ERA with 80 strikeouts in 90 innings pitched in a 7-8 season. Wilenta was 3-8 with a 5.6 ERA but did not strike out many batters and relied on her teammates making the plays, which became risky at times when errors squandered leads against highpowered teams in the late innings, including a 6-5 loss to powerhouse Toms River East after Brick Township had a 5- 0 lead going into the final inning. "There always seemed to be something," said Caci dubiously.

Junior third baseman Kelly Garrido also returns; she came on strong after a slow start to bat .313 and hit a pair of home runs. Also back are sophomore outfielder Kat Kiseli, and two catchers eager to step into Morgan's spot - junior Samantha Ellis and sophomore Nicole Binetti, who also can play in the outfield. Leone, a junior, also returns.

They were part of a season that saw some bright spots, including a strong Florida trip. Brick Township barely missed qualifying for the NJSIAA Tournament and suffered a 3-1 Ocean County Tournament loss to Jackson Memorial, which scored the go-ahead runs on errors late in the game. Ironically, defense was considered one of the keys going into the season after a number of fine plays were turned in pre-season workouts. But that changed once the season began, and the team had swings of good plays in the field and bad plays.

"We had a good game, then a bad game, good game and bad game," said Caci, who seems optimistic that that can be smoothed out a bit for next season in the keenly competitive Shore Conference A South.