Cadence Mansfield’s North Arlington Girls Softball Recreation Middle Division team needed a pitcher, she simply raised her hand.
“When we reached the level where they had us start pitching, I think I just picked it up because no one else was doing it,” recalled Mansfield, who said she was 7 or 8 at the time.
That decision year ago has led to the now-high school sophomore doing things no North Arlington pitcher has done in recent memory.
Over her last seven starts, Mansfield has recorded 10 or more strikeouts five times, fanning a total of 76 batters in just 44 innings. North Arlington has gone 5-2 in that stretch, which included a 5-0 victory over Becton in which Mansfield struck out 13 in a three-hit shutout. This past week, the Vikings recorded wins over Lodi, Wood-Ridge and Hoboken with Mansfield striking out 31 in that time.
Mansfield’s incredible run of strikeouts makes her The Observer Athlete of the Week.
For the season, Mansfield has a sparkling 1.31 ERA with 88 strikeouts in 53.1 innings. The last time North Arlington had a pitcher put up numbers like that was when Kerrin Dys fanned 213 batters in 2011 before going on to pitch at William Paterson.
“All of her pitches have just improved tremendously over the winter,” head coach Emma Stagg said. “Sometime last week I looked at my assistant coaches and I was like wow, she has so much more control on her ball in the last year.”
Mansfield credits the success to the increased movement on all of her pitches.
“Over the offseason, I worked on all of my movements,” said Mansfield. “I’ve been able to use the movement of my different pitches.”
Mansfield showed flashes in the circle last year as a freshman when she struck out 78 batters in 88.1 innings with a 3.17 ERA, highlighted by eight strikeouts in the Bergen County Tournament against Ridgefield Park.
Before this season, Mansfield added a cutter to her already deep collection of pitches, which included a fastball, changeup, rise ball, screwball and a curve. According to Mansfield, the cutter has become a game changer just months after adding it.
“My pitching coach (Ish Falcone) wanted to try another way to throw my curveball,” and when we realized my curveball and my cutter were both moving differently, he just decided to have me start throwing that as well.
“I only learned it a few months ago, so normally it takes a lot longer to control a pitch, but I just picked it up really quickly.”
Figuring out which of those pitches are on might seem difficult, but Mansfield said she usually knows what is or isn’t working during pregame.
“Normally during my warmup I can tell right away when something’s not working,” Mansfield said. “I’ll just communicate that to my catcher (Isabella Buccheri).”
Mansfield and Buccheri have been batterymates for so long with chemistry so long that they call their own game, rather than rely on their coaches.
“They have confidence in each other and they trust each other tremendously,” said Stagg. “That just makes all the difference.”
The two sophomores are among five underclassmen in the starting lineup for a Vikings squad that has new-found confidence heading into the second half of the season and the upcoming county and state tournaments.
While they ended in defeat, Mansfield showed that North Arlington can compete against some of the best teams in the county, allowing just three earned runs over 13 innings against Pascack Valley and Rutherford with 17 strikeouts.
“To have a pitcher that I know is going to pitch (like Cadence) is huge and if the ball is put in play, we can make plays behind her,” Stagg said. “If we get our hitting turned around, we can pretty much compete with anybody.”
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Jason Bernstein | Observer Sports Writer
Jason Bernstein joined The Observer as its sports writer in March 2022, following the retirement of Jim Hague. He has a wealth of sports-writing experience, including for NJ Advance Media (nj.com, The Jersey Journal, The Star-Ledger.)