Staff Report
With as much travel ball as some softball athletes are playing these days, it’s not all that uncommon to see freshmen and sophomores making big impacts on their high school varsity teams.
Rancocas Valley had a decent year last year, winning 13 games and making it to the second round of the state playoffs, but this season the Red Devils went 19-7, won the Olympic American Conference title with a 9-0 mark, and won three straight playoff games before finally being stopped by Kingsway Regional in the sectional championship game.
A big reason for RV’s success was the play of freshman shortstop Payton Schwartz. A really athletic middle infielder, Schwartz makes a ton of plays at the shortstop position, has very good range and a strong arm for a first-year player. In the sectional championship game against Kingsway, she corralled a ball that was smashed off the third baseman’s glove and threw the runner out as if it was an easy two-hopper right at her.
Schwartz also was a pretty good hitter at the bottom of RV’s lineup. Her average wasn’t eye-popping, at .253, but she got on base a lot, scored 22 runs (second on the team) and showed some pop. Of her 19 hits, nine of them went for extra bases, and she added 10 walks and two stolen bases. In only four of RV’s 26 games was Schwartz held to all zeroes on the stat sheet. In nearly every game she did something positive, whether it was a hit, a walk, a run scored, an RBI or getting hit by a pitch.
Expect Schwartz to only get better from here. She started figuring things out at the plate as the season went on, finishing the year on a six-game hitting streak that saw her bat .467 with five runs scored and three RBIs. She went 1-for-2 with a double and a run scored against Kingsway’s Jessa Pieters, a senior and one of the top pitchers in South Jersey.
— Dave O’Sullivan, Staff Writer
