It was the best lineup Victoria Capozucca has faced all year and the best one she will face the rest of the way, too. That’s why no one involved with the Poly Prep softball team was unhappy with a 2−0 loss to Tottenville in a non−league game Friday afternoon in Bay Ridge.
Capozucca was absolutely brilliant. She allowed just two runs, neither of them earned, on four hits and struck out 11 against New York City’s top team.
“I’m very proud of myself,” the junior windmiller said. “This team is like the one to beat. They’re the ones that no one can beat.”
Tottenville left Brooklyn impressed. Coach Cathy Morano said Capozucca was the hardest thrower her team had seen in a long time and one of the best pitchers the Pirates had seen all year. She wasn’t just throwing gas, either. Capozucca’s rise was working wonders.
“She had a nice rise ball and a lot of the girls swung at it,” Tottenville sophomore Victoria McFarland said. “I almost got caught on one of them, too.”
Poly Prep clinched a fourth straight Ivy League championship last week and the NYSAISAA playoffs began Sunday.
In preparation for the playoffs, Poly coach Mildred Piscopo scheduled two of the best teams in the city this week. The Blue Devils lost to James Madison, 2−0, last Monday.
“I always want to win, but both games we were in until the end,” Poly Prep senior shortstop Stephanie Caso said. “There’s nothing more you can ask for.”
The Blue Devils don’t get challenged all too often in league play, which is why Piscopo stacked the schedule like she did. She knew that beating a team like Tottenville would be a tall order, but there she was in the middle of the game gazing at the scoreboard.
“In the fourth, I looked up,” Piscopo said. “I said, ‘We have the opportunity to do something here.’”
Tottenville scored its first run in the second inning when Jeanine Leo scored from third on an error after Ashley Corrao’s double. The Pirates tacked on an insurance run when McFarland drove in Leo, who reached on an error, with a triple in the seventh.
Caso, who will attend the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, said if there’s one thing her team needs to do better it is reacting better in the field. But there’s no doubt that the two losses this week could only help the Blue Devils in the playoffs.
“We accept that,” Piscopo said. “It was more than respectable.”
