Sloppy Fifth Dooms West Deptford Softball Juniors

With leads of 4-0 and 6-1, the West Deptford Junior Softball All-Star team was looking good in its quest to keep its tournament alive for at least another day.

Then the hits stopped coming. In their place were walks and defensive miscues. As a result, West Deptford lost to Gibbstown, 9-6 without ever giving up a clean hit all game.

Gibbstown erased the 6-1 deficit by scoring six times in the fifth inning on four walks, two errors and a handful of wild pitches, passed balls and poor defensive decisions.

Gibbstown added two more runs in the sixth without a hit to advance to the District 15 loser’s bracket final.

“We made defensive errors that inning,” West Deptford coach Steve Ruszkai. “We had four walks also, but the problem was defensively we had mental lapses. We had four fielders’ choices that inning, and if we had thrown them to first we would have had outs.

"The girls on the other team were running, so by the time we threw to second they were there. If we through to first and got outs, we limit the damage. The key to that inning was limiting damage, and we didn’t do it.”

Even after seeing its lead turn into a deficit, West Deptford did not seem deflated. The local all-stars got singles from Izabella Ruszkai, Allison Gallagher and Sierra Press to load the bases with one out.

After Kim Alexander popped out to the pitcher, Ciarra Girouard nearly put West Deptford back on top. Girouard ripped a line drive down the third base line that would have scored at least two runs and possibly three.

However, the ball was called foul and Anderson would later ground out to end the threat.

“We came right back the following inning and get bases loaded with one of our top hitters up, and she hits a foul ball by inches,” Ruszkai said. “I couldn’t see it down third base, I had to rely on the home plate umpire and he said it was foul. If it was foul it had to be by pure inches. We get a hit there, we score two and we have our cleanup hitter up.”

West Deptford went down in order in the top of the seventh.

Early in the game, it looked as though West Deptford would be on its way to a rout. The team scored four runs in the first inning, highlighted by a two-run single by Gallagher. Anderson added an RBI single in the second and later came around to score on an error.

However, Gibbstown starter Marissa Miller settled in and retired 10 straight, spanning the second through the fifth innings.

“She got in the grove,” Ruszkai said. “Marissa Miller is one of the best pitchers in District 15. She wasn’t on her game in the first inning and we took advantage of it, which is what we as a good team needed to do.

"Then she got in the grove and we were trying to do everything we could to manufacture some runs in the middle innings, and it didn’t work.”

Even though the all-star tournament came to an end earlier than Ruszkai and his players would have liked, the coach had plenty of positive things to say about his team. Most importantly, he said, is that the girls have shown that they are ready to play at the next level.

“We are happy and proud that we think we’ve set up West Deptford High School pretty well,” said Ruszkai. “These girls are going to high school next year and we think they are going to be pretty good when they start playing high school ball.

"That’s all we want to do is prepare them for when they move on to the future, and I think they are ready.”

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