It’s funny how the game of softball works some times.
A year ago, North Bergen’s softball team was clearly the best team in Hudson County. It was the Bruins and then the rest. The Bruins steamrolled through the regular season. They owned a veteran lineup and had the best player in the county. It was destined for the Bruins to win the Hudson County Tournament title, right?
Wrong.
Union City managed to upset the Bruins, 6-5, in the championship game. It was the lone loss that North Bergen suffered inside the confines of the county all season. It just happened to come at the wrong time. Needless to say, it was a heartbreaking setback.
Although veteran head coach Tom Eagleson had won his fair share of county titles in his storied career, the loss to Union City a year ago had to sting more than any other, simply because the Bruins were such the clear-cut favorites.
“We were pretty disappointed,” said catcher Kayla Muniz. “We took that loss pretty bad, because we did everything together and thought we should have won.”
“That game ended with Kayla crying at second base,” Eagleson said. “It was an emotional loss.”
So when the 2012 season began, the Bruins might have hoped to return to the title game and avenge that defeat, but at the time, they only seemed to be nothing more than pipe dreams. The veteran team from a year ago had mostly graduated, including standout four-year pitcher and slugger Carla Arismendi, the 2011 Hudson Reporter Most Valuable Player of gone to play Division I softball at Southern University.
“We basically had six new starters,” Eagleson explained. “We had Kayla at catcher and Sabrina Reyes at third base coming back. We also had Nerylix Cerda back, but we moved her from left field to shortstop. It’s hard to explain, but I think this was the team that I would have least expected to win a county championship in the last 20 years. I never expected it.”
One of the main reasons why Eagleson didn’t know what to expect lied within his pitching. For the last 20 years, Eagleson never had to worry a single moment about his pitching and who was throwing the ball. There was always an endless parade of pitchers, standout All-County hurlers who remained in the circle for four years and never moved.
It was almost like Eagleson was presented with a superstar pitcher every four years. One left, the other arrived. Like a revolving door of flamethrowers. Needless to say, the coach was blessed for two full decades.
When Arismendi left, Eagleson was left with a dilemma. There was no freshman superstar in the making. The only one left was junior Jessica Feria, a left-hander with control problems.
“Last summer, when she started pitching for us in summer ball, she was walking like 6-to-8 batters a game,” Eagleson said. “It was almost hard to watch. In the fall, she got better and cut it down to maybe three a game. That gave us a little hope.”
But when the 2012 season began, the Bruins sputtered out of the gate.
“In our last scrimmage, Secaucus no-hit us,” Eagleson said. “I was worried. I wondered, ‘What in the world are we going to do?’”
The Bruins lost three of their first six games, including a 2-1 setback to Hoboken. The once-mighty Bruins appeared to be a little bit pedestrian, having lost one county game to Ferris, giving the Bulldogs their first win of the season after seven losses.
“All of a sudden, things just clicked,” Eagleson said. “We went on a little run. We got big hits when we needed them.”
And the wild lefty suddenly became dominant.
“That’s been the whole key,” Eagleson said. “She’s come back and been unbelievable. I never expected her to do what she’s done. She’s won 20 games for us. She’s beaten some good teams. Her walk-to-strikeout ratio now is incredible. She struck out 16 in one game. She’s really been phenomenal.”
The Bruins have rolled off 16 straight wins, including a win over state-ranked Monroe, since that setback to Ferris in mid-April. They motored through Lincoln, Secaucus and McNair Academic to get back to the Hudson County Tournament title game once again.
“We came together as a team and just got better and better,” said senior veteran Muniz, a four-year member of the Bruin varsity. “Jessica was so much of a key. She came a long way and progressed so much as a pitcher. She gained so much confidence.”
When the Bruins gathered to face top-seeded Hoboken in the title game last Saturday at New Jersey City University’s Gerrity Complex, Muniz had a message to her teammates.
“I told them to leave it on the field, because you never know when you’re going to get another chance,” Muniz said.
She should know, remembering the anguish of a year ago.
However, Muniz made sure that there would be no repeat of 2011 on her own. She blasted a two-run homer over the fence in the first inning and added another two-run blast in the sixth, leading the Bruins to the 7-3 victory over Hoboken and the Hudson County Tournament championship.
It might have come a year later than expected, but the Bruins were the queens of Hudson County softball once again.
Muniz never hit a home run over a fence before Saturday and she managed to get two. Quite an accomplishment.
“It was a great way to start the game and we just kept going from there,” Muniz said. “Once I hit the second one, I had full faith that we were going to get it. We were the underdog all season. Maybe that helped. We had to prove everyone wrong that we were the best team.”
Feria did her job, holding the Red Wings to just six hits, striking out six and more importantly, walking just two. She’s made her mark as a top pitcher in the county and can now fall into place with the other great Bruin hurlers, because she has the county title as proof.
It was Eagleson’s 12th county championship. Now northern New Jersey’s all-time leader in coaching victories with 544, Eagleson might not have enjoyed a more fruitful victory.
“Without a doubt, it’s more rewarding when you’re not expected to win,” Eagleson said. “Everything just fell into place at the right time. It weird, this sport. You can never really know when things like this happen. I seriously can’t explain it.”
No one can. That’s why in softball, you have to play the game. North Bergen is proof of that – and has the county title now to prove it.
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com. You can also read Jim’s blog at www.jimhaguesports.blogspot.com.