Panic? It didn’t come to panic. The Old Bridge softball team viewed its four-run deficit in Friday’s Central Jersey Group 4 quarterfinal game like a fascinating puzzle. The solution was going to come.
“We always break through,” senior second baseman Ava Accettulli said. “That’s the thing about our team. We never give up.
We know that something good will always come out of it. We can always come back. We know we’ve done it before, so we can do it again.
” It’s not something you want to gamble on too many times -- but it happened as predicted against Hightstown. The top-seeded Knights broke through with five runs in the fifth inning and overcame eighth-seeded Hightstown, 7-4, to advance to the sectional semifinal round. Old Bridge (21-5) batted around in the fifth with the help of two Rams’ errors.
Savannah Martinez led the inning off with a single and then Dimitra Milonopoulis reached on the first misplay. A wild pitch moved them into scoring position, then a sacrifice fly by Zoe Milonopoulos cut Hightstown’s lead to 4-1. There was something like a collective sigh in the Knights’ dugout at that point.
“I think we’re a team that kind of gets going when one person gets going,” Old Bridge coach Angela D’Amico said. “And I think 1 through 9, in that inning, they were just fired up. All it took was one.
We know that we can hit well. It’s just a matter of getting it going.” Amanda Jupinka followed with a single that made it 4-2, but an error on a.