Catherine Meyers pitches 1-hitter as Sayville softball wins playoff opener
Sayville pitcher Catherine Meyers throws a pitch at Highschool softball game between Mount Sinai and Sayville teams at Eastport South Manor Athletic Complex in Manorville on Thursday, May 19, 2022. Credit: Morgan Campbell
Sayville softball coach Tiffany Rowan was standing behind the visitors’ dugout and awaiting Mount Sinai’s arrival for the teams’ Suffolk Class A first-round game when a simple question was posed: What was the Golden Flashes’ record going into this postseason?
“I have no idea,” Rowan replied. “I honestly don’t keep track.We need to win today. I guess that makes us 0-0.”
This is an attitude that is pervasive on Sayville and no more so on Thursday than in pitcher Catherine Meyers. The senior righthander took a no-hitter into the sixth inning and ended up with a one-hit shutout as the fifth-seeded Golden Flashes topped the very tough fourth-seeded Mustangs, 5-0, at the Town of Brookhaven’s Eastport South Manor Athletic Complex.
Amanda Audia hit a double to the wall in left centerfield with one out in the sixth to spoil the no-hit bid for Mount Sinai (13-3).
“The mindset on this team comes from our coach – we never look ahead and we never look behind,” junior catcher Sarah Blaskiewicz said. “If there’s something right in front of you, that’s what you have to do. We live in the present.”
After the state tournament was canceled the past two seasons because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is returning this season and judging from the pitching of Meyers, the hitting and game-calling of Blaskiewicz and the aggressive baserunning and hitting up and down the order, Sayville may be looking to pick up where it left off.
In 2019 Sayville won the Suffolk title to reach the state quarterfinals and the Long Island crown to reach the semis, where they lost a heartbreaking 20-inning game.
“This team does have that same kind of potential, though the roster is a little smaller,” said Blaskiewicz, who started on that 2019 team as an eighth-grader. “I see us as a good little team and we’ll show you we have some heart.”
Meyers was exceptional in getting her pitches to move to the top and bottom of the strike zone and changing the eye level of the Mustang hitters. She struck out 13 and walked just two.
“She spins the ball and changes the planes on the hitters,” said Mount Sinai coach Jim Apicella, who coached LIU Post until the school shuttered the program. “Her ‘rise’ is very tough and requires patience.”
“She was hitting all her spots and it was pretty awesome,” Rowan said.
Giovanna Calicchio had three hits and an RBI, Blaskiewicz and Bella Lundquist both had two hits and an RBI, Colleen Doyle had two runs scored and Kristen Tellier had an RBI for Sayville, which plays a second-round game on Saturday. The Mustangs play in an elimination game on Friday.
Tellier’s RBI single in the first was all the scoring until the sixth. The Golden Flashes, who for the record are 14-4, scored two in the inning on run-scoring singles from Blaskiewicz and Calicchio. They added two insurance runs in the seventh.
“I just love the way we’re playing right now,” Meyers said. “There’s a momentum and we’re feeling confident.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
