By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
MULLICA HILL — The South Jersey Group 3 semifinal between third-seeded Absegami and No. 2 Clearview Regional looked less like a softball game and more like a championship boxing match. Each team threw jabs, straight rights, haymakers, uppercuts — and each team responded.
It was a matter of who would be left standing by the seventh inning.
The host Pioneers fell behind 4-0 in the second inning, rallied to tie the score, fell behind again, 5-4, in the fourth, rallied to tie the game again, then exploded for four runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to finally grind out a 9-5 win over the Braves — ending one of Absegami’s best seasons ever in the process.
Clearview advances to Friday’s championship game, where it will meet top-seeded Delsea Regional, a 12-2 winner over No. 5 Hammonton in the other semifinal.
“This feels amazing. All the other years I’ve been playing we haven’t made it past the second round, so it feels amazing to be going to the finals. I’m at a loss for words, it’s so exciting,” said Clearview senior captain and center fielder Jodi McGuigan, who went 2-for-4 with a double and a run scored. “We’re a very good hitting team, we just had to get some little hits to get some runs in. It’s not always about the home runs. If you get singles and get runners on base, eventually you’ll get some runs in.”
McGuigan started the decisive sixth-inning rally with a bloop single to left, and freshman shortstop Ella Redheffer followed with a bunt single. An infield error loaded the bases, and Mallory Engle’s groundout to first plated McGuigan with the eventual game-winning run as the Pioneers snapped a 5-5 tie. Redheffer scored on a wild pitch and two more runs came home on a sacrifice fly by Ava D’Alessandro coupled with a throwing error.
That 9-5 lead was plenty for reliever Gabriela Capri, who set the Braves down in order in the top of the seventh to seal the victory. Capri had three strikeouts and didn’t allow a run or a hit in two innings of work in relief of fellow junior Sienna Garrison, who fanned one and scattered eight hits in five innings.
“The whole thing is you have to put the bat on the ball. Kudos to Absegami, they have some great hitters, but our girls are resilient. I told the girls early in the season that we were going to have to be resilient. In every close game we’ve had, we’ve taken punches and given them back — you just have to see who can throw the knockout punch, and today we got to throw the knockout punch,” said Clearview coach Matt Schneider. “The one blessing we have is I have two junior pitchers. Knowing I have those two to go back and forth — Sienna is more of a power pitcher where as Gab is more of a spin/location pitcher. We’ve done that quite a few times this year, go two or three times through the order and then switch it up. They started getting to Sienna and I was worried about trying to go through their order one more time with her. So we put Gab in there and she closed it out for us.”
The Pioneers said they had some confidence coming in because they faced, and beat, Absegami star sophomore pitcher Meghan Johansen earlier this year, 6-3.
“We had confidence because we had played against them once before. We had to adjust to her. She was quicker and had more spin than the pitchers from Lacey or Mainland, so we had to adjust to that,” McGuigan said. “When we went down 4-0, we were just thinking about ourselves. Coach Matt always says to have a memory like a goldfish and put it behind you. He just said, ‘let’s go up to the plate and get some hits,’ and we did and scored four runs.”
“We played them early in the year and beat them in a tournament down at Oakcrest, so we had that under our belt and that gave us some confidence,” Schneider added. “And we’re riding a seven-game winning streak. We told our girls after our last loss that I expect us to win eight games in a row, which puts us where we’re at. The girls bought into it, (the championship game) is where we’re going, and I couldn’t have asked for it to happen to a better group of girls.”
Clearview came unraveled for a bit in the top of the second, as Absegami scored two runs on an infield error and added two more on an RBI single to right by Molly Williams and an infield single by Alyssa Bailey. But that 4-0 lead didn’t last long, as Clearview rallied for four runs in the bottom of the second, scoring on an error, a wild pitch and RBI singles by Redheffer and Garrison.
“We have girls who just want to play the game and win,” Schneider said. “We have a girl who is our best hitter (Redheffer), in the No. 2 hole, who goes up there and puts down a huge bunt (in the sixth inning) to get runners moving because we knew that’s what we had to do to get a run in. Our girls do the little things and we had a few bounced go our way, and that’s how the game goes. You have to play all seven innings.”
The Braves finished the season with a 21-7 record, just three years removed from a 4-17 campaign that ended with an eight-game losing streak.
“I always start off by saying all glory to God, win or lose he’s always with us. He’s the one who put me in this position to take over this team at the right time. These seniors came in as freshmen the year after covid and only won four games. For them to work as hard as they have and to climb up out of the basement and win their division (of the Cape-Atlantic League). (Assistant coach Pam) Pickett said they’ve left a legacy of what hard work looks like,” said Gami coach Barbara Dell’Aringa. “We told them it wasn’t going to be easy. When you get to this level you can’t make mistakes and you have to hit. It just wasn’t their day today. We’ll go back and look at everything, see what was good and what was bad. But we told them how proud we are. Five of these girls are going on to play in college and they are going to do good things.”
“I’m so proud of all these girls, especially the seniors. It’s been a really long four years for us. My freshman year we only won four games, but every year we got more talent and more girls put everything they had into the game,” added Bailey, who’s committed to play at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia next year. “It’s been an absolute honor to be part of this program. The bond that this team had is so far above anyone else I’ve ever been with. Even the underclassmen are so amazing, and they have so much more to show off the next couple of years.”
WHAT’S NEXT: No. 2 Clearview at No. 1 Delsea Regional in the South Jersey Group 3 championship game, Friday, time TBD. Absegami’s season is complete.
