Youthful Oceanside shows potential

Oceanside had defending Nassau Class AA softball champion Long Beach on the ropes before the Lady Marines scored five runs in the top of the seventh inning to win a Conference AA-I/II crossover game on April 8, 6-2.

The visitors twice rallied from a run down and had six of their nine hits off Lady Sailors sophomore pitcher Ashley Davis over the final two innings. Shannon Shamis had three hits and three RBI for Long Beach, which trailed 2-1 after sophomore Arianna DeMarzo’s homer in the bottom of the sixth.

“It’s not a tally mark in the column we want, but the girls showed a lot of confidence and played tight all the way against a high-caliber team,” Oceanside first-year coach Alyson Lamonte said. “It was a great effort.”

Winning pitcher Kelsey McLaughlin retired the first 10 batters she faced and didn’t allow a hit until junior Jessica Kambic’s leadoff single in the bottom of the fifth. Junior Sydne Jacoby drove home Kambic to give the Lady Sailors a 1-0 lead, but Long Beach evened the score in its next at-bat when Shamis singled home Sydney Folk.

In the top of the seventh, McLaughlin and Brittany Martin set the table with back-to-back singles and Haley Birnbaum walked to load the bases. Folk knocked in McLaughlin with the tying run, and a walk to senior Korinne Fox forced Martin home with the go-ahead run. Shamis capped the outburst with a two-run single.

“They impressed me,” Long Beach coach Carmine Verde said of Oceanside, which has one senior—Eva Milone—on its 14-player roster and is minus star shortstop Samantha Ray due to a knee injury. “They made some big plays in the field,” Verde added. “We had to dig deep to pull this one out.”

The Lady Sailors made three stellar defensive plays within the first five innings to keep Long Beach off the scoreboard. In the third, Milone fired a strike from second base to sophomore catcher Nicole Milano, who tagged out a sliding McLaughlin at the plate, and junior shortstop Alexa Katz made a diving stop of a Birnbaum grounder and completed a force. In the fifth, with runners on first and second, sophomore Deanna Viola snagged a line drive by Martin in short center to end the inning.

“The potential is here,” Lamonte said. “It’s just a matter of seeing it through.”

The Lady Sailors were coming off a tough 6-5 loss at Syosset that saw the tying and winning runs score with two outs in the top of the seventh. Junior Kati Hoffman and freshman Kristen Gallub homered in the loss. 

Lamonte, who previously coached softball for five years at Pelham High School, didn’t have to wait long for her first win at Oceanside. Davis kept Plainview-JFK’s bats quiet and drove in a pair of runs along with Katz, who homered in a 4-1 season-opening triumph.