Staff Report
When you were talking about the Ocean City High softball team the past four years, you couldn’t talk about Brooke Douglas without talking about Jessica Mooney. It’s like the Red Raiders created an all-state softball player — and then cloned her.
The seniors had nearly identical statistics, both at the plate as hitters and inside the circle as pitchers, and they helped lead the program to new heights as the Red Raiders won the South Jersey Group 3 championship this past spring and were one win away from playing for a state title.
It was easier to reel in a kite on a windy day on the boardwalk than to get hits and score runs off the pair when they were pitching. This season, Douglas pitched to a 2.58 ERA in 95 innings, striking out 162 while allowing just 35 earned runs, while Mooney posted a 1.05 ERA in 93 2/3 innings, fanning 119 while allowing just 14 earned runs all year. The duo combined to register 22 of Ocean City’s 24 pitching wins, and gobbled up all but 14 of the innings the team played the entire season.
For her career, Douglas finished with more than 500 strikeouts, and as a hitter the numbers were just as eye-popping: a .460 career average with 155 hits, 139 RBIs, 73 runs, 27 homers, 29 doubles and 40 walks. Mooney — whose older brother, Sean, was a baseball star at the school who went on to play professionally — had 533 whiffs as a pitcher and a 1.74 career ERA, while at the plate she hit .439 for her career with 155 hits, 106 RBIs, 81 runs, 16 home runs, 27 doubles and 30 walks.
To put into perspective the kind of impact these two players had for the Red Raiders, in the last four seasons they combined to score or drive in 399 runs. Ocean City got 100 runs a year from just two players.
— Staff Writer Dave O’Sullivan
