Softball: Gatto walks Dayton off over Scotch Plains-Fanwood in Union County final

UNION TOWNSHIP (Union) – The emergence of the Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School softball team has been one of the great stories of the 2024 season, especially the Raiders’ eighth-seeded run past two heavy favorites to the final of the Union County Tournament, a height the program hadn’t reached in 23 years.

And while SPF certainly showed every bit of the heart that got it to Monday night’s championship tilt -- especially when it rallies from a four-run deficit to tie the game in the top of the seventh inning -- in the end, Dayton shortstop Angela Gatto had the last word.

The junior finished 3-for-4 with two home runs and three runs scored, turning in a momentum-shifting defensive play along the way, and her two-out, two-strike round-tripper in the bottom of the seventh inning was the walkoff winner, as the second-seeded Bulldogs notched the program’s first county championship in the tournament’s 48-year history, edging Scotch Plains-Fanwood 6-5 at Kean University.

“If you listen to a lot of the coaches who watch us play, you’d hear that our energy is probably the most important thing in our game -- besides hitting and making plays and all that,” Gatto said. “Throughout every inning, it was ‘Don’t sleep.’ It was our favorite saying, ‘Stay humble, stay hungry.’ In the top of the inning, we said we had last licks for a reason, so it was all teamwork. It’s not an ‘I’ it’s a ‘we.’”

The game looked like a foregone conclusion for most of the first six innings, with Dayton ace Lila Carroll scattering six hits and striking out nine headed to the seventh inning, as her team played flawless defense behind her. But as it has all year, Scotch Plains-Fanwood never stopped fighting.

Dayton got on the board in the bottom of the first inning on an RBI single by Natalie Migrone, and increased the advantage to 3-0 in the second when Gatto scored on an error before Kate Buckley singled in the game’s third run on her way to a 3-for-4 outing that included her 100th career hit in the first inning.

The Raiders finally broke through in the top of the third inning, getting a one-out single from Sam Friscia, a long double from Maddie Bogart, and an RBI groundout from Angela Valente. It looked as if SPF was primed for more as Olivia DiSalvo came up and unleashed a screaming line drive that looked destined for the left-center field gap. But Gatto flashed to her left and laid out on a headlong dive, spearing the ball it to end the inning, immediately grabbing the momentum back for her squad.

“I added a little hop into my prep step, that’s what got me there. Nothing more than that,” quipped Gatto, a three-sport star who tore her ACL early last softball season, forcing her to also miss soccer and basketball season this year.

Carroll bore down after that, allowing just two walks and hitting a batter over the next three hitless frames, ringing up six strikeouts to keep the Scotch Plains-Fanwood attack at bay.

Dayton, meanwhile, increased it advantage to 5-1 in the bottom of the fourth, getting a towering Gatto home run to left field, a double by Olivia Douglass, and an RBI double from Jenna Campos. The Bulldogs then began the sixth inning with a single by Mignone, prompting SPF coach Matt Giannacio to bring in Sairah Llano in relief of DiSalvo. The senior allowed a hit to Carroll, but after a runner was caught stealing, the righty struck out the next two hitters, and side stepped a bases-loaded jam in the sixth, to send the game to the seventh with the Raiders down four runs.

That’s when Scotch Plains-Fanwood showed the fight that’s carried it its more successful season in decades.

Julia Friedrichs led off with a single, but was thrown out trying to advance on a ball in the dirt. But that did nothing to put out the Raiders’ fire. Friscia doubled and Bogart followed with another, driving in the run, before Valente lined an RBI hit to center field to cut the deficit to 5-3. DiSalvo followed, hitting a laser beam of a rising liner to right field that Douglass was able to reach up and snag, bringing up sophomore Emily Roof, who cranked a two-run game-tying home run to center field and sending the SPF dugout and their fans into a frenzy.

“Our biggest thing this year is controlling the controllable. There are a lot of things that happen in this game that you can’t control, but there are a lot of things you can control, and our emotions are one of them,” said Giannacio, a longtime Raiders assistant in his second season as head coach after taking over one game into last year. “Even playing in a game like this, with the ability to come back with all the pressure in front of a few hundred or a thousand-something people here, being able to do that under the circumstances of how this game happened shows a lot about the fight we have.”

In the end, the night belonged to Gatto and the Bulldogs. The junior watched Llano strikeout the first two hitters in the bottom of the seventh inning, and she fell behind 0-2, but she knew she would have to hit what was she was offered with two strikes, and she did just that, sending a no-doubter to right-center field for the walkoff homer.

“At 0-2, I’m not really being picky, I just had to go with it and I took it the other way,” Gatto said. “It wasn’t even seeing something I liked, it was just anything in the strike zone. I’m not one for outside pitches, but I have to take my chances in the moments that matter.”

Dayton will open the state tournament as the top seed in North 2 Group 2 when it plays host to Harrison in Wednesday’s first round. Scotch Plains-Fanwood is the No. 3 seed in the ultra-competitive North 2 Group 4 section, with a first-round date with Union on tap. The Raiders have scored some big wins in the UCT against powers that have beaten them repeatedly over the years – like top-seeded Governor Livingston and No. 4 A.L. Johnson – and scored triumphs over some other big-time programs en route to 16 victories. They’ll have to beat even more established juggernauts in states if they’re to make a run at a sectional title, but this is clearly not the same program that has been an also-ran for the bulk of the past quarter century.

“We’ve been fighting a lot this year, and we’ve beaten a lot of teams we haven’t beaten in the past,” Giannacio said. “Our program’s changing, and our girls are changing the culture of the program right in front of their eyes. And seeing all these little kids in the stands (tonight), this is what it’s is all about, giving them a front-row seat to what it could be like in the future.”

BOX SCORE

SCOTCH PLAINS-FANWOOD (16-8) 001-000-4—5-9-3

DAYTON (20-6) 120-200-1—6-12-0

WP: Carroll. LP: Sai. Llano

2B: SPF—Roof, Bogart 2, Friscia; D—Douglas, Campos. HR: SPF—Roof; D—Gatto 2.

Staff writer Simeon Pincus has been covering NJ sports since 1997, and has been on the softball beat since 1999. He can be reached atCourierSoftball@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter/X @SimeonPincus