Amanda Barrese winds up a pitch for Sea. (Kendall Rodriguez)
Hitting balls over the fence isn’t Jackie Bonamassa’s game on a team with plenty of players who provide power. The St. Joseph by the Sea leadoff hitter relies on her blazing speed, slapping and bunting, but that doesn’t mean she can’t get home with one swing or even half.
With the Vikings struggling for runs and hits against Moore Catholic’s Emily Horihan, Bonamassa bunted a ball to the left of the pitcher’s mound in the bottom of the fifth inning. Mavericks third baseman Jen Coughlan didn’t initially charge and then threw high to first allowing Bonamassa and Kristina Mazzarisi to come home.
“I don’t get to really hit home runs, so if I can make a home run out of a bunt on errors it’s a lot of fun,” the senior centerfielder said. “I don’t get to hit them out like the rest of them do.”
The two runs gave Sea the lead for good in a come-from-behind, 4-1 win over the rival Mavericks in CHSAA Staten Island softball Saturday in Huguenot in the first annual Joan DeRienzo Memorial Breast Cancer Awareness game. Jackie Kelly capped the inning with an RBI double off the base of the left-center field wall and Bonamassa brought home a run with a groundout in the sixth for the Vikings (11-0).
“Once the bats started, I knew they weren’t going to stop,” pitcher Amanda Barrese said.
It was she and some stellar Vikings defense, outside of a rare Jackie Kelly error, that allowed Moore to score in the opening inning. In the fourth with a runner on second and one out, Mazzarisi took a ground ball at shortstop and tagged Courtney Strype going to third and then threw to Bonamassa, who was covering second, for a tag out of Gina Palmeri to end the frame.
The following inning it appeared Moore (8-2) would extend its lead with runners on second and third with no outs. Barrese, who scattered six hits, got a shallow fly out to right, Kelly would gun down Taylor Baggs, who doubled to lead off the inning, at the plate and Barrese then got Krissa Sagona to fly out to Laura Leone at first.
“We built the team from the defense out,” Sea coach Mike Ponsiglione said. “We made big plays and then we scored runs. We fed off our defense.”
The 1-0 deficit was the first time Sea, the top-ranked team in the city by The Post, had trailed all season. The players, while never wanting to be behind, said they enjoyed being in a tight game. The Vikings beat the seventh-ranked Mavericks,10-0 in five innings, in their first meeting and have a slew of run-rule wins this year.
“I think it was good for us because it woke us up knowing that we are not going to be handed anything, that we actually have to work,” Barrese said. “We do work for what we get.”