By Wayne Witkowski
Less than a day after pitching New Egypt High School to its fifth NJSIAA Group I softball championship since 2006 June 11, Faith Weber was back on the mound for her New Jersey Bandits travel team in a showcase in Gloucester City.
“I’m feeling really tired now,” said Weber, who said she was up at 5 a.m. June 12 to get ready for the daylong showcase.
Weber was joined by New Egypt teammate Gabby Medina, who caught the six innings Weber pitched in one game, as the Bandits swept all three games.
“I was definitely sore and I wasn’t throwing 17 strikeouts, just eight or nine,” Weber said. “I had good defense behind me, and I was just trying to get batters to ground out, but I was not as strong as in the state championship game.”
Weber, who is headed to George Washington University in a few weeks, nailed down a 2-1 victory over Butler High School the previous day. In a rematch of the 2014 state championship game when New Egypt beat Butler, 1-0, Weber struck out 13 and did not walk a batter while allowing three hits. She and Chloe Lewis also drove in runs, as New Egypt ended its season at 19-7 with its seventh straight victory.
Butler (28-3) had a 17-game win streak snapped.
The surge to the state title reversed a slow start, and a 4-4 season in the Burlington County Scholastic League (BCSL) was just a building block to the success that would come later for New Egypt’s softball team.
Although she did not enjoy quite the softball acclaim of New Egypt alumna Emily Bausher, who pitched the Warriors to back-to-back state championships in 2010 and 2011 before embarking on a college softball career at Lehigh University, Weber had her share of glory.
In basketball, Weber scored 1,000 points like Bausher and grabbed 1,000 rebounds as the first player at New Egypt to accomplish that “double.” She led the Warriors to back-to-back sectional titles before last year’s team fell short in the semifinals.
Despite missing the first few weeks of the softball season, which figured in New Egypt’s 3-5 start along with three players shifting to new positions in the field, Weber put together a superb season. Weber went 18-4 with an ERA of 1.00, striking out 253 and walking 34 in 154.2 innings pitched with 22 earned runs allowed.
She said she is not certain whether she will pitch in college or play first base, where she played on the 2014 state championship team.
“It’s great where we started and where we came as a whole with the development of the team,” Weber said. “It showed how much we worked to get to this point.”
That went all the way to the state championship game, where Weber was locked in a pitching duel with Butler’s Larissa Spellman, who came into the game with 350 strikeouts. Spellman had 13 strikeouts and no walks in the game.
All of the scoring came in the third inning and New Egypt scored its runs in the bottom of the inning without getting a hit. After a walk, an error put runners on first and second with two outs for New Egypt, and Medina walked to load the bases. Weber was hit by a pitch, but the umpire ruled she lunged into it. Weber then walked on a full-count pitch to push across the first run. Chloe Lewis batted next and was hit by a pitch to force in the go-ahead run.
Weber said she anticipated another close game, just like the prior state championship meeting between the two teams.
“I knew we could come back. It wasn’t pretty, but we got two across and then we had to play tough [defense],” Weber said.
Unlike last season when New Egypt lost to Henry Hudson Regional High School in the Group I semifinals, Weber was glad she had the opportunity to win another championship, just like she did last summer when she helped the Burlington County team she played on win its first Carpenter Cup championship.
Weber said she saw the signs of a championship contender when the team bounced back from a 10-0 loss to Bordentown Regional High School to beat Riverside High School, 7-4, in the next game May 16 for the BCSL tournament title. Weber pitched a three-hitter with 11 strikeouts and three walks. Meagan Smith, who was selected to this year’s Burlington County Carpenter Cup team along with Medina, drove in five runs with three hits that day.
“That loss to Bordentown was our worst loss, and then we turned it around,” Weber said. “Everyone was starting to get a feel for how we played. There were a lot of younger players on varsity who had to adapt to that style and me coming back from my injury. We changed our mentality, and then we put it all together.”
Weber had suffered a broken hand — her non-throwing hand — in a game at the end of the basketball season. But she still did her part at the plate despite missing a few early days of the season with a .380 batting average, and she led the team in RBIs with 26, home runs with six and triples with three. Lewis batted .430 with 21 RBIs, and Smith hammered a team-best .457 average with 19 RBIs. Rebecca Lombardo, who batted .380, and Medina, who hit .372, each drove in 20 runs.
The good news is many return, including juniors Smith, Medina and Lombardo, as well as Lewis, a sophomore.
Sam Getz, a reliable contributor, graduates. But there will be one huge spot to fill with the departure of Weber.
