Senior Amelia Plescia had two hits and scored twice in NV/Old Tappan's 9-run first inning in a 12-0 win over River Dell in the North 1, Group 3 state sectional quaterfinals.
OLD TAPPAN – Experience is hard to quantify. It’s not a measureable like exit velocity, home-to-first times or the speed or spin of a pitched ball. It’s one of those things that you know it when you see it, and it stuck out like a sore thumb in the North 1, Group 3 state sectional quarterfinal round.
Northern Valley/Old Tappan has four seniors on its roster that have been playing together for the better part of a decade. Two of them, starting pitcher Jamie Farrington and catcher Victoria Viganola, form the battery and the other two, Amelia Plescia and Mia Ferraro, occupy the No. 1 and No. 3 spots in the batting order and the Golden Knights’ Class of 2025 did some damage on Friday afternoon.
Plescia (2-for-3, 2R, RBI) and Ferraro (1-for-3, 2 RBI, 2B), who have both surpassed the 100 career hits milestone, went a combined 3-for-4 with 3 RBI and two runs scored in the first inning alone, a frame in which NVOT sent 13 hitters to the plate and scored 9 times. Farrington and Viganola hooked up to throw a near perfect game.
Farrington gave up a ringing double to Maddie Roth, the first batter of the game, and then proceeded to retire the final 15 batters in a row to close out a 12-0, 4-and-a-half inning win. Old Tappan, the No. 2 seed, needed just one hour and one minute to complete the victory and it will host No. 3 Morris Hills, an 8-0 winner over Roxbury, in the semifinal round on Wednesday.
“The seniors performed. We have four seniors in this lineup and they are working their tails off to extend their season and their careers for as long as they can,” said Old Tappan head coach Melissa Landeck. “Victoria behind the plate, Jamie on the mound, Mia at first and Amelia at short; everything was on display. They hit, they made outstanding defensive plays, they set the tone for us today.”
Maddie Roth had the River Dell hit, a leadoff double in the top of the first inning.
River Dell (15-12), the No. 7 seed, was coming in hot having just battered Northern Highlands for 18 runs in the opening round and when Roth led off the game with an extra base hit it looked like some more of the same. There was no way to know then that Roth would be the Golden Hawks first and only base runner of the game as Farrington decided to just flood the strike zone. Not only did she not walk a batter, she ran three-ball counts just twice in the game.
“I was very locked in from the beginning and I had my defense behind me, protecting me and making all the plays,” said Farrington (5 IP, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 H, 7 K, 0 BB, W), a right-hander. “We scored early and that was definitely a weight off my shoulders. We got a lot of runs, I just had to stay locked in and get outs.”
Plescia got things going with an infield single out of the leadoff spot in the bottom of the first inning and that was followed by freshman Grace McManus’ single. Ferraro moved both runners up a base with a groundball before Sophia Savino drew a walk to load the bases. Erin Huelster (1-for-3, 2 RBI, R) knocked in the first two runs of the game with a single, Viganola reached on an error and Ava Candullo drew a walk to reload the bases.
Leona Sasaki (1-for-2, 2 RBI, R, 2B) followed with a sac fly to centerfield and Riley Smith (1-for-1, RBI, 2 R) walked to turn the lineup back over for Plescia, who second at bat of the opening inning resulted in an RBI single. Before it was all over McManus (2-for-3, 2 R, 2 RBI) added a two-run single and Ferraro cracked a two-run double to make it 9-0.
Freshman Grace McManus had two hits and two RBI for Old Tappan, which will host No. 3 Morris Hills in the semifinals.
The Knights are big fans of the series Cobra Kai and it turns out that a fictional karate dojo's vibe carries over nicely on the softball diamond.
“We tell each other, ‘Strike first, strike hard, no mercy,” said Plescia, who will play at Dickinson College next year. “That is the game plan and that is what we did.”
It is also why the Knights celebrate doubles with the crane kick pose that Ralph Macchio used in the original version of the Karate Kid.
“We feed off each other’s energy, we don’t want to leave anyone on [base] and we are just looking for base hits,” said Ferraro, who will play at Widener University next season. “When you put the ball in play good things happen.”
More good things happened in the bottom of the second, a three-run rally that started with two outs and the bases empty. Candullo (1-for-2, 2R, 2B) and Sasaki swapped places with back-to-back doubles to reach the 10-run threshold, Smith added an RBI single and she later scored on an error to finish the math.
While Old Tappan’s side of the bracket is chalk, the top half has No. 9 Sparta and No. 5 Randolph matched up in the semifinals, a residual effect of 16th-seeded Wayne Hills’ stunning upset of top-seeded Ramapo in the opening round. The Knights (21-3) are the only Bergen County team remaining in the draw.
“We have been playing with each other since we were like in second grade and we know it is finally coming to an end,” said Farrington. “It’s kind of scary, but we have each other and we want to keep going until the end.”
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