Taylor Krupa wasn’t looking to do too much. The Moore Catholic catcher’s main concern was just not striking out with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning and her team trailing St. Joseph by the Sea by a run.
“My mind set was to get on base,” the junior said. “Just a single, that’s all I needed. Once it hit the bat I knew it hit the sweet spot.”
Krupa’s well-struck double off the base of the wall in left center was the start of the Mavericks writing a pleasing, and at the time, unlikely ending. Moore would string together four straight hits, scored twice in the frame and turned a game-saving double play in the top of the seventh to secure a 4-3 win against the division-leading and visiting Vikings in CHSAA Staten Island softball Monday.
“Just jubilation,” first baseman Jen Coughlan said of beating their rival. “Pure excitement.”
The senior had a big hand in providing it and handing Sea its first regular-season league loss since the Mavericks beat them 4-3 in April 2009, snapping a 33-game win streak. Coughlan followed Krupa’s double with a line-drive RBI triple that Sea left fielder Lianna Jordan came in on, but did not recover in time. Jackie Heinz plated the go-ahead run with a single to shallow left against Sea starter Alexa Tedeschi to make it 4-3. The Vikings won the first meeting 11-0 in five innings in early April.
“Our girls never gave up,” Moore coach Kristine Knuth said. “Even when we were down one run our girls were on the fence. They knew they were still in this game.”
The Vikings (8-1), ranked No. 2 in the city by The Post, didn’t think they were out of it either. Jackie Kelly, who was 3-for-4, smoked a leadoff double to the right center field gap. But when Jackie Cautela hit a ground ball to second, Sea pinch runner Jessica Plutchok broke back to second and then ran to third. Coughlan threw to Nicole DeMartino, who applied the tag at third for the double play. Meghan Seaman flied to center for the final out.
“They have such powerful batters that anything could have happened If I didn’t throw the girl out at third,” Coughlan said.
It was the only time all game a team scored more than a single run in an inning against the Vikings.
Sea struck first thanks to a Kelly RBI double. Krupa drove in Taylor Baggs, who was 2-for-3 with two runs scored, to knot the game at 1 in the second. The sixth-ranked Mavericks (8-2) had a chance to break the game open in the fourth. But they stranded runners on second and third with one out after Baggs doubled and scored on Sea catcher Michelle Abolt’s wide throw to first. She was trying to double off DeMartino after Maria Genovese popped up a bunt.
Sea, which left runners on second with less than two outs in the third and fourth innings, got a run back in the fifth on a Cautela sac fly and Mara Scopellito have her team a 3-2 lead with a two-out RBI single up the middle in the sixth against Moore starter Gianna DeCesare. She scattered eight hits and was the beneficiary of some steady play by her defense. Tedeschi also allowed eight hits and walked just one.
“Her locations were good,” Coughlan said of DeCesare. “Almost spot on.”
She and her teammates don’t want to get too caught up in the win. The Mavericks fell 8-7 to third-place St. John Villa last week in a loss they called humbling and a kick in the butt. This win keeps their hopes for a first-place finish still alive, but they will need to beat Sea on May 14 in Huguenot and hope it falters somewhere else along the line.
“We still have the mindset we need to keep winning,” Krupa said. “We want to clinch first of course. It’s not going to get us conceited or anything. “
