The Benjamin Cardozo softball team wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
“Don’t you remember the story of David and Goliath?” head coach Lawrence Alberts asked his girls leading up to June 10’s clash with Tottenville.
“We’re gonna be the underdog,” second baseman Jaclyn Liebowitz told The Courier. “Everybody [has to] put the ball in play, play our game, and not press.”
The Judges’ spirit was apparent, though not enough to win the game, when they faced the defending city champs, who last year blanked Bayside in the title contest by ten runs. Tottenville took Wednesday’s city semifinal matchup 9-1, setting up a Saturday final versus James Madison, which Tottenville won.
But Cardozo did have a fleeting period of hope when an Anna Laboccetta RBI gave the Judges a 1-0 lead. Cardozo held on in the bottom of the first, putting Tottenville in the backseat for the first time all season before the Pirates scored three runs in the bottom of the second.
Laboccetta, a first baseman, notched the second of three first-inning hits for the Judges, knocking a double into left-center field and scoring Sandy Tomasik from second. The judges ended up totaling eight hits to challenge Tottenville’s 13.
Tottenville’s explosive second inning began with a triple by catcher Ashley Corrao, scoring on a relay throw that got away. Three hits later, the score was 3-1.
Tottenville added four in the third, one in the fourth, and one in the sixth, with starting pitcher Amanda Annicaro staying on for all six innings. Though the Pirates’ offense was hardly a surprise – Annicaro had said earlier that her goal was to keep the game “at least close” – she did concede six bases on balls, three more than she gave up in the quarterfinal against Francis Lewis.
On the other pitching rubber, Alyssa Corvino threw hard, keeping Annicaro, Liebowitz, and leftfielder Sara Meletis hitless.
But the Judges can look with some pride at their first-inning feat, which marked the only time in the entire postseason that Corvino had conceded a run. Laboccetta, a fan of the fastball, joined centerfielder Jennifer Beiner and Samantha Mersten on the list of Judges to notch two hits against the Tottenville senior on Wednesday.
They can also recount a season in which they finally won their top Queens division after playing second fiddle for years to Bayside. They even one-upped the Commodores in the playoffs; their eight hits Wednesday beat the three Bayside tallied versus Tottenville in last year’s quarterfinal, and then again in last year’s double-elimination final.
