Westlake Falls to the Sailors in Tournament Final

Ali Brunetto provided a perfect start to Westlake’s annual softball tournament. Then a long delay, intermittent rain and the Hendrick Hudson Sailors provided the Wildcats with an imperfect finish.

The junior southpaw pitched a six-inning perfect game, striking out 14 of the 18 overwhelmed Pleasantville batters she faced in Saturday’s 15-0 opening-round victory in the Wildcat Softball Invitational.

Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they then had to wait more than 90 minutes before the start of the championship game and never came close to duplicating their earlier dominance against the new opponent.

“No excuses, no excuses. They were ready to go,” said Westlake head coach Claudio Barbieri shortly after his Wildcats had fallen to Hendrick Hudson 10-8 in the title game. “It’s one of those games. It’s just execution. We didn’t execute in the field, and that happens. When a team puts the ball in play, we have to execute the plays, not give them extra outs, especially against a good team like that.”

The Wildcats, now 3-2 this season, turned to Angelina Guarnieri to pitch against the Sailors. She got through an uneventful first inning before Westlake grabbed a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the inning as Daniella Mulvey reached on a one-out walk and wound up swiping three bases, scoring on the back end of a double steal started by Kelly Pierce.

Westlake found itself in trouble for the first time all day in the top of the second as Hen Hud erupted for four runs with two outs. Guarnieri surrendered RBI singles to four consecutive Sailor batters, starting with pinch-hitter Sophia Brown.

Guarnieri stranded a pair of Hen Hud runners in the next inning, then the Wildcats supplied her with a big four-run uprising in the bottom of the third. Mulvey, who along with Brunetto was later named to the all-tournament team, opened the inning by belting a towering home run down the left-field line over the newly installed fence.

Pierce then reached when her fly to right was misplayed. Brunetto drew a walk and the bases became loaded when Pierce beat the throw to third on Guarnieri’s comebacker to the mound. A run scored as Kristin Pierce was hit by a pitch and then the Wildcats tied the game on a walk to Nicole Dragonetti. A sacrifice fly by Liz Brentano gave Westlake a 5-4 lead, but the inning ended with Laine Peterson lining into a double play.

In the fourth inning, Hen Hud grabbed the lead for good, scoring three times, highlighted by Alyssa Bleakley’s two-run double over the head of Brentano in right field. In the bottom of the inning, the Sailors’ Candace Crowley, who wound up being voted the tourney’s most outstanding performer, gave up walks to Jamie Perfito and Brunetto, but Guarnieri flied out to center to end the inning.

The Sailors padded their lead with three more runs in the fifth, again scoring all of them with two outs. Ashley Lupi dumped a two-run double down the line in left and Michaela Capicotto followed with an RBI single to right that stretched the Hen Hud lead to 10-5.

Westlake stranded two runners in the fifth inning, then Barbieri turned to Brunetto to pitch in relief in the sixth. She quickly gave the Sailors a taste of what Pleasantville had already endured, striking out both Thea Barbelet and Amber Porro swinging and then getting Brown on a called third strike.

Barbieri had resisted the temptation to put the ball in Brunetto’s hands at the start of the game, focusing instead on the long-term direction of his team rather than a win-at-any-cost mentality.

“Well, I’m thinking for the long haul,” he said. “We’re thinking playoffs and stuff like that. I want to keep her as fresh as possible. With all the rainouts, we’re gonna have a bunch of games in a row. I try to think the big picture. And Ange was in there, she fought hard. She fought hard and we didn’t make some plays behind her. But she pitched well, I thought.”

The Wildcats scored twice in the bottom of the sixth inning, which started with singles by Mulvey, Kelly Pierce and Brunetto. The infield hit by Brunetto scored the first run, while the second came on a ground out by Gurarnieri. But Westlake left the bases loaded as Peterson’s soft liner was caught in center field.

In their final turn at the plate, the Wildcats added one more run. Perfito, who had smacked a first-inning home run against Pleasantville, led off by lining a double to the gap in left center. She eventually scored on a ground ball by Pierce. But the game ended with Brunetto receiving a dose of her own medicine, getting called out on strikes.

“I think we’re in a good place,” said Barbieri, despite having to settle for second place. “We’re continuing to get better. We’ve just got to focus on the little things and getting better at that stuff. It was a long day, but they always give great effort.”

Even if the Wildcats had been able to overcome the five-run deficit they faced against Hen Hud, chances are the talk afterwards would still have been about the pitching performance of Brunetto much earlier in the day against the Panthers. At one point, she struck out eight consecutive Pleasantville batters.

“She’s put a lot of work in the last two, three years to become a pitcher, not a thrower,” said Barbieri. “She has the mentality now. She always had the tools there, but now mentally she understands how to pitch, not just throw. She’s doing a great job.”

Brunetto had pitched a no-hitter last season, but none of her teammates were about to bring it up while she was mowing down the Panthers.

“We kind of don’t like to talk about it because you don’t want to jinx it ever,” she said. “But towards the fifth inning, we were kind of getting excited. People were like whispering about it. But nobody really said it until it actually happened. And to get the perfect game, I mean, it’s just like icing on top of the cake.”

Andy Jacobs

Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.

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