Seventh Inning Rally Earns 'W' For Seaford Softball

The Seaford Vikings softball team  gave its fans a thrill Wednesday, staging a three run come from behind rally in the top of the seventh and hanging on to win a key league contest at New Hyde Park by a score of 5-4.

The win put a little distance between Seaford (4-5, 5-5 overall) and the Gladiators (3-4, 6-5 overall) in the league standings, and gave reason for hope that the Lady Vikings may be staging a late regular season rally as the post season approaches.

“I’ve been looking forward to the warm weather, and we’re starting to get it,” said Seaford coach Ron Perpell after the game. “This is a team that has worked their butts off in practice, and has ended up on the wrong end of a lot of close games this season. You can start to doubt yourself when that happens too often.”

There was no reason for the Lady Vikings to doubt themselves after the stubborn refusal to lose against New Hyde Park. The team win came on the strength of clutch hitting and opportunistic base running for Seaford -- and a strong return to the mound for Lindsay Montemarano. Montemarano came on in relief of starting pitcher Hannah Spinola with her team down 2-1, and pitched 5 1/3 innings of seven hit, two run ball -- striking out five and walking three in the process -- for the win.

The game was tight for six innings, with Seaford tying it up in the top of the third on the strength of an RBI grounder from Victoria Wink -- her second hit of the day, and second RBI.

In the fourth the Lady Vikings threatened again, on a bunt single for Alex Palazzo and a walk for Lauren Pfaff, but could not convert.

Meanwhile, in the bottom of the fourth, New Hyde Park loaded the bases with one out on Montemarano -- but the Seaford pitcher calmly struck out the next two batters for a huge stop on the mound. However, the Gladiators were able to pull out to a 3-2 lead in the fifth when pitcher Lisa O’Callaghan tripled and came home safely on a wild pitch.

The damage could have been worse -- Montemarano managed to minimize the bleeding by tagging a second runner out at the plate on a wild pitch to end the inning.

The sixth inning saw more dramatics but no scoring. In the top of the inning, Palazzo slam a one out triple into left center, but Seaford’s batters were unable to bring her around. And in the bottom of the inning with New Hyde Park threatening and two outs, Wink nailed a runner out at the plate to stop the rally in its tracks.

The stage was set for Seaford’s seventh inning heroics. Down by one, Toni-Ann Medaglia led off with a clean single, and Nicole Nulty walked. After a failed bunt attempt by Val Insardi, Montemarano stepped up to the plate and cracked an RBI single to knot the score -- and on the wild pitch that followed, Nulty scampered in for the lead run at 4-3.

After an intentional walk to Wink, it remained for Courtney Carbrone to provide the margin of victory, with a ground out RBI to make it 5-3.

New Hyde Park’s desperate bottom of the seventh rally provided some excitement, but in the end fell short -- scoring only once, on a hard single that got past a Lady Vikings outfielder and rolled all the way to the fence. Seaford hung tough, getting a line out to centerfield to end the game with another W in their pockets.

“That was a tough loss,” said Gladiators coach Jackie Rizzuti afterwards. “Both teams played well -- we were equally matched. A couple of mistakes here or there, and it could have been different.”

Coach Perpell agreed. “A ball takes a bad hop and they get a home run. Another gets stuck in the fence and they go to third,” he said. “But we kept putting the ball in play, and we played tough every inning. It just goes to show -- the harder you work, the luckier you get. I‘m very happy for our team.”

                                          1   2   3   4   5   6   7   HITS   RUNS

SEAFORD                    1   0   1   0   0   0   3       5            5

NEW HYDE PARK  0   2   0   0   1   0   1       8            4