National Conference
Owls taking flight – Bensalem – with three wins in eight games this season - might not be striking fear in the hearts of opponents just yet, but watch out. The young Owls are showing signs of turning things around under first-year coach Dan Schram, and opposing coaches are taking notice.
“He’s done a great job with those kids,” Pennsbury coach Frank McSherry said. “They’re all young, and those kids never stopped, they never gave up, and they didn’t hang their heads. They just didn’t seem to be discouraged. He has them playing proud.”
Those comments – from one of the area’s most respected coaches – came after the Falcons defeated the Owls 20-0 in a game that was halted after three innings because of the mercy rule. Despite the outcome, there is a noticeable difference in this year’s Owl squad.
“Even if we’re losing 20-0, we still want to cheer because it feels good,” sophomore Amy Jarosz said. “Our goal is to actually get the title of being one of the loudest teams.
“It’s fun, and everyone’s spirits are up when you’re cheering.”
Jarosz – referred to as Amy ‘Pete Rose’ Jarosz by her coach in a recent interview – sets the tone for this year’s young squad.
“This is a kid who loves to get dirty and will do anything to win,” Schram said of his sophomore pitcher.
A member of the elite Sports Connection travel squad, Jarosz is a seasoned veteran compared to many of her teammates. Isabel Hansberry (shortstop), Jenny Campbell (shortstop) and Kelly Nolan (pitcher/first base) are all freshmen, and all are making an impact.
“It’s a big weight lifted off my shoulders because last year I had to go into a position (shortstop) I didn’t even know how to play because they didn’t have anyone there,” Jarosz said. “A lot of people looked up to me and wanted me to do a lot even if I couldn’t do it.
“We have all these new teammates, and they’re all talented, and I have respect for them. They’re young freshmen, and they come in against these big seniors, and they’re hanging with them. This year we’re just closer as a team, and we want to do something.”
Although the Owls have endured some lopsided losses – they fell to Norristown 16-1 in their season opener and were defeated by William Tennent 17-0, they have shown the ability to put runs on the board. In their three wins combined, the Owls have scored 42 runs.
“These kids are hitting the daylights out of the ball,” Schram said. “If you look at our games, we are winning lopsided games, and we are losing lopsided games, which is totally a sign of youth and also not having legitimate varsity pitching.”
That is not a knock on Jarosz, who had not pitched since middle school.
“She had to pitch every single game in middle school, and it gave her a bad taste, but we were really short of pitching,” Schram said. “It’s the ultimate testament that we have come full circle when you see Amy on the mound because this is a girl that set parameters last year and said, ‘I don’t want to pitch,’ and she was not completely happy last year, and you could see it.
“This year she’s a different kid. One of the first things I see her do in practice is she likes to get a running start and go slide somewhere just to get dirty. The girl will run through a wall for me, and she really is the guts of the team.”
Last season, Jarosz played shortstop and batted leadoff for an Owl squad that was outscored 220-20.
“It was too much responsibility without any support,” Schram said. “When she saw the other girls coming up this year, she saw there were other people that were going to do this with her, and she was not going to be the lone star.
“Isabel (Hansbury) is the attitude and the girl who can mix it up for you, but Amy is the girl who has become the embodiment of everything I would ever want in a player. If every kid was like Amy, I would coach until I was a thousand.”
When Schram - an assistant under Don Bogan for 10 years – took over the helm, he put an off-season conditioning program in place. That was just one of many changes.
“The kids started conditioning and lifting weights on their own,” the first-year coach said. “It was no softball – just cardio and conditioning.
“We have practice shirts, new uniforms, and we were going to go six days hard and never, ever quit.”
Schram – himself from a strong baseball family – added several former softball players to his staff. Kelly McGowan, an elementary school teacher in the district, played at Trenton State, and Schram calls his other assistant, Samantha Tu, the best softball player he has ever coached. Tu was recently inducted into the Bensalem Hall of Fame.
Interestingly, the idea of making a serious commitment to softball apparently didn’t appeal to a lot of players. Last year’s team had 44 players on its roster. Just nine returned this season. Sophomore Shannon McVicar is back, and she has seen action on the mound. Junior Julia Quigley has anchored the outfield, and Jessica Cusack is the lone returning senior.
“They knew I would be a maniac and go full throttle,” Schram said. “I told them, ‘Either you are dedicated or you’re not.’
“We’re still a little shorthanded, and when we’re winning now, it’s because we’re outworking our opponents in practice. I believe it’s karma too. You go hard all the time and you get rewarded.
“It seems we have a formula that’s really starting to jell, and it starts with Amy Jurosz, and it also starts with these freshmen who just don’t know any better. They don’t know how bad it was before, so they can hold their heads up and say ‘I’m part of something.’”
Under the new regime this season, Jarosz admits that even the lopsided losses feel different.
“Last year losing 20-0, a lot of people got down on themselves,” the sophomore pitcher said. “I guess they didn’t seem into it. It was like, ‘Oh, it’s Pennsbury. We’re going to lose again.’ Just looking back – as a team, we weren’t all mentally into it.
“This year with Schram stepping up – he’s been an amazing, and everyone has a different mindset. They’re like, ‘Okay, we’re losing 20-0, but we know how they play now. The second part of the season is coming up, so be careful.’ We want to play them again and see how we can do against them the second time.”
Continental Conference
Young Maidens on a roll – Heading into the season, it might have been easy to eliminate North Penn from the list of potential contenders in Continental Conference play. After all, the Maidens lost four standout seniors from last year’s squad that finished third in the conference standings with a record of 8-6 – which was five games behind conference champion Central Bucks South and four games behind second place Hatboro-Horsham.
After seven games this season, the Maidens – with wins over CB South and Hatboro already under their belts – boast a dazzling 7-1 record and share the conference’s top spot with Hatboro.
“I look at who they graduated – I didn’t think North Penn was going to be an easy game, but I was surprised at how well they did after their losses (to graduation),” CB South coach Jennifer Robinson said.
So far this season, the Maidens have displayed the perfect combination of veteran leadership and high energy youth.
Seniors Stephanie Kulp, Taylor Marchozzi and Kellianna Bradstreet as well as junior Jess Mower are the undisputed leaders of a young Maiden squad.
“If we didn’t have the leadership of our seniors and Jess, we wouldn’t be here,” coach Rick Torresani said. “Kellianna has been coming out and just dominating when we need it.
“Taylor getting the home runs and getting the big hit against Hatboro, and Steph getting big hits – they’re the three kids that just come out every day and push these kids and push these kids, but it’s not overbearing. It’s not ‘We’re seniors and you’re freshmen and sophomores – you listen to us.’ No, we’re a team, and they’ve made it a team. They’ve brought everyone together and have done a great job. I have to include Jess Mower in that too – she’s just an awesome, awesome influence on the kids.”
Rounding out the starting nine are sophomores Michelle Holweger – who started as a freshman – and Jenn Halcovage. Freshmen Erin Maher, Vicky Tumasz and Michelle Rauch have stepped into starting roles and made an immediate impact.
Consider only last Thursday’s 3-2 non-league win over Ridley. The Maidens found themselves staring at a 2-0 deficit heading into the sixth inning when Holweger delivered a solo home run to make it a one-run game. With two outs in the seventh, it was Halcovage connecting for a clutch RBI single to plate the equalizer.
In the 10th inning, Rauch laid down a suicide squeeze with one out to plate the go-ahead run.
“I wasn’t really nervous,” she said. “I knew I could do it.”
Torresani, for one, isn’t surprised to see his young players deliver. He watched Maher and Tumasz step up in key spots during basketball season.
“I saw the composure they had playing basketball,” the Maidens’ coach said. “I knew when they came to softball – which is their sport – they would have that composure.”
“Basketball helped a whole lot,” Maher said. “Coach Maggie (deMarteleire) is really good at preparing us. Me and Vicky had problems with putting our heads down, and she was always tell us ‘Don’t let it snowball,’ and I always keep that in the back of my head.
“When I walk up to the plate now, I’m not nervous at all where if I was taking a foul shot in basketball, I was sweating.
“The competition level in basketball prepares you,” Tumasz said. “But I’m still nervous every at-bat.”
Rauch didn’t have the luxury of playing basketball, so she was new to the world of high school varsity sports this spring.
“It was really different – freshman year you’re really not sure how to take it, and you have to come out and really work hard,” she said. “It was probably tougher for me because I didn’t know what the high school level was like.”
If it seems as though the freshmen might not understand the significance of some of their team’s big games against the likes of CB South and Hatboro, guess again.
“We know they’re big,” said Tumasz, her eyes widening at the mention of those two teams.
“We realize how big they are when we look at the seniors and see how intense their faces are,” Maher said. “We know we better not fool around.
“Like Kell (Bradstreet) – she has been waiting four years to beat CB South. She struck out one of the girls on CB South, and she said, ‘Wow, I’ve been waiting four years to do that,’ and it makes us realize we’re pretty lucky to be able to win a game like that and get that experience.”
So far, it’s been quite a season for a Maiden squad many had picked to finish in the bottom half of the league standings.
Rams clear the air – Never underestimate the value of a team meeting. Pennridge was winless in SOL play heading into last week when the Rams picked up a pair of wins, defeating Central Bucks West (5-2) and Quakertown (7-4).
Some of the credit for the change has to be given to a team meeting the preceding Sunday night. Actually, the wheels for that meeting were set in motion after the Rams fell to Souderton 7-0 two days earlier.
“I’m pretty demanding,” coach Paul Koehler said. “I’m vocal, and I have high expectations of these kids. Good enough is just not good enough, and I tell them so.
“After we lost to Souderton, I said, ‘Is there something we need to be doing differently? Is there something we need to be addressing in practice and we’re not? Please let me know. It’s okay. You can tell me.’ No one said anything. I said, ‘That’s okay. Shoot me an e-mail,’ but no e-mails.”
The first-year coach spoke to a friend over the weekend.
“I told him what happened, and he said, ‘That would tell me there is something wrong. They’re just afraid to step out there,’ so I called a team meeting for Sunday night,” Koehler said.
A no-holds barred team meeting was held with the assurance that whatever was said in the meeting stayed in the meeting.
“They got to let out some steam and let some things go and ask me some questions,” Koehler said. “I made some apologies for things I probably hadn’t done right. They took responsibility for some things they hadn’t done right.
“I think they came to the game on Monday (against CB West), and for once in this season, they felt like they could talk to me about what was going on. They could talk to my assistant coaches about what was going on. Not that we had given them any indication otherwise, but there’s this fear factor – ‘We really don’t know this guy, and we really don’t know his coaching staff.’ They came to the game on Monday with a sense of ‘We feel good about what’s going on, and we feel like we can turn this thing around.’
“They played with a different level of enthusiasm, and they played with a different level of focus and got some things done. They were feeling really good after that game, and that’s really all that matters. I learned a long time ago – you have to feel good to play good. It was a really good evening for the team Sunday night to talk about some things. I’m glad we didn’t let it go another week or two weeks. We’ll see.”
One thing that came out of the team meeting was the decision to select captains.
“Early in the season, I didn’t feel like I wanted to appoint captains, and I didn’t feel like there were kids who had stepped up,” Koehler said. “There were two girls who really were the spokespersons during the meeting, and that was Jordan Villella – our only senior – Emily Hofmann, a junior who has taken over the catching responsibilities.”
Prior to the Rams’ win over CB West the following day, those two players were voted captains by their teammates.
“That set the tone on Monday,” Koehler said. “While they had already been taking a leadership role unnamed, now I think they felt more comfortable and confident stepping up and doing that in a game.
“Jordan was very verbal with the outfielders, and Emily has always been a verbal leader on the team, and she also got back into it and got a couple of hits after struggling the previous week. Those two have really stepped up.”
A long-time travel coach with the Sellersville Belles, Koehler admits that coaching high school is a completely different experience.
“The thing I love about high school ball is you play for something whereas summer ball has become a lot of showcase softball and playing for exposure and that kind of stuff,” Koehler said. “In high school, you’re playing for your community, you’re playing for your school, you’re playing for league standings, and you’re playing to get into districts, which is exciting stuff.
“What I also lost sight of – this team’s motto or quest is ‘Getting better all the time.’ I confessed to them that I don’t think my discussion focused on getting better all the time. For the first time in my life, I caught myself focusing more on winning and losing more than I did on playing the game the way it needs to be played. If we play it right and we lose so be it.”
American Conference
Eagles flying high – It was Christmas in July for Jon Kandrick and the Norristown Eagles. At least that’s what it felt like when they found out that Gwyn Botley was transferring from St. John Paul II to Norristown for her junior year.
“We got a gift,” Kandrick said. “Her dad works in one of our middle schools, and I knew they were thinking about it. I said, ‘Listen, don’t transfer here just for softball. If you want to come here and get a good education and softball will complement that – that’s fine, but don’t transfer for softball.’
“We were blessed. I got a call in late July that it was official and she was coming here. It was probably the best phone call I had in a long time.”
A veteran pitcher, Botley has been outstanding on the mound, capably filling the shoes vacated with the graduation of two-year starter Daisy Foster. The move allowed Kandrick to move Sara Rosetti – penciled in to pitch this season – to another position, solidifying the defense.
“It helped the team because I can put Resetti at shortstop or the outfield when Gwyn is pitching, and it makes us a better team altogether,” Kandrick said.
Rosetti also has seen some action on the mound and picked up a win over Upper Dublin on Monday, but Botley has been Norristown’s workhorse.
“Gwyn has done a great job,” Kandrick said. “She’s a great kid. She was stuck behind a really good pitcher over there, and she didn’t get much time because of it, but she would pitch for just about any other team in this area.
“She’s very disciplined, and she has fun.”
Kandrick tipped his hat to Botley’s pitching coach, Joe Ferguson.
“I have known Joe for years, and he is an absolutely excellent pitching coach,” the Eagles’ coach said. “He does everything you could possibly ask for to help a kid pitch.
“Gwyn is finally having her time to shine this year, and she’s doing a great job. Even the game we lost to Wissahickon she had 13 strikeouts. We lost because we gave up unearned runs, not because of Gwyn.”
Another standout on Norristown’s squad is senior third baseman Gabbie Berry.
“She’s been a great leader,” Kandrick said. “She probably could have been a captain all three years I have been here. She finally got the chance this year and has really taken advantage of her leadership role.
“She was a leader before, but she was a quiet leader. Now she finally has a chance to step up and help the younger kids out. Because she was on varsity as a freshman, she knows what it’s about, and she’s done such a great job with helping those kids in school and out of school. She’s just a godsend.”
Another senior who has also made important contributions is Julia Santoro, who was last year’s designated hitter but seeing some action at first base this year.
“She is leading our team in hits,” Kandrick said. “She’s just becoming a better hitter. She got a lot of hitting in last year, and she’s still hitting the ball well.
“She gets frustrated with herself sometimes because she wants to get three or four hits a game, but she’s getting that base hit for us when we need it and is doing a great job hitting-wise.”
Gina Pellechio is a junior captain who gives the Eagles versatility while junior Sammi Kidd is the team’s second leading hitter.
“Gina’s a kid that we can put in any position, and we’ve used her in multiple positions so far this year,” Kandrick said. “Sammi is probably the best athlete I have ever coached and is by far the best athlete we have on the team. I could make those kids run until they throw up, and Sammi would want to run some more.
“She’s that type of kid. She does such a great job. I have her in center field, and she just takes command of that outfield.”
The Vikings – one game behind conference leader Wissahickon in the standings – faced third place Upper Merion on Tuesday in a key game.
- Log in to post comments
0
