Resilient Havens leads Eastport-South Manor to Class A county title
Eastport girls softball team celebrates a 2-0 victory over Kings Park during the Class A Finals held at Kings Park High School. Credit: Frank Koester
After a Game 2 shutout win on Saturday, coach Steve Giacalone joked that he needed to buy a thesaurus to find new ways of calling pitcher Catherine Havens a gamer. Here's some help: gritty, gutsy, resilient - and now he can add "winner" to the list.
Havens displayed maturity and skill in the circle, working into and out of trouble to craft a 2-0 victory for visiting No. 3 Eastport-South Manor over No. 1 Kings Park (22-3) in the deciding Game 3 of the Suffolk Class A softball finals.
This is the first Class A county title for Eastport, and the program's first county championship overall since 2004, when it was in Class B. ESM (19-4) will take on Floral Park in the Long Island championship on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at Mitchel Field.
"I've been saying all along, there's just not enough to say about this kid," Giacalone said of Havens. "The poise she has is unbelievable."
Kings Park loaded the bases in three separate innings and came away empty-handed. Havens faced five batters with the bases juiced, striking out two and inducing three groundouts. She faced 20 batters with a runner on base and gave up just three hits and walk. She had 11 at-bats with a runner in scoring position, allowing only two hits and a walk.
"I've had so much pressure on me, I guess the experience paid off," said Havens, who struck out nine, walked four and allowed five hits. "I get that mind-set to just get the batter."
But her heroics in the circle would have been for naught had the offense never got going against premier Class A pitcher Lindsay Taylor, who struck out five.
With one out and a runner on third in the fifth, Devin McKinnon lined a double to the wall in left-center to break the scoreless tie and then scored an insurance run on Havens' two-out single.
"She pitches me inside all the time, so I stepped off the plate, zoned in, locked in and did it," McKinnon said.
Kings Park loaded the bases with two outs in the fifth and one out in the sixth but couldn't tie the score. Havens was in the zone and unflappable.
Just another word to add to the list.
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