Ocean City Tops Lower Cape May for Girls’ CAL Crown

After splitting the regular season series at one game apiece, Ocean City and Lower Cape May met in the Cape-Atlantic League Championship at Stockton University last Saturday. Using their trademark balanced attack, consistent ball rotation, and stifling defense, the Red Raiders earned their first title since 2009 with a 34-26 decision over the 24-2 Caper-Tigers.
Olivia Briggs was the beneficiary of excellent ball movement as she repeatedly secured excellent looks at the rim to finish seven of eight in field goal shooting for 14 points and 10 rebounds. Sierra Schoenwald, one of the team’s two seniors, used her 5’ 8” frame and impressively improved skills to help control the glass with 14 rebounds.
Ocean City head coach Paul Baruffi credited a rigorous non-conference schedule with helping to prepare his team for moments like last Saturday.
“Sierra and Olivia battled against bigger girls from teams like Shabazz, Franklin and Rancocas Valley,” he said. “I schedule those games purposely. We always get a tough team to play in the Holy Spirit tournament and we know we’ll have a big match at the Battle by the Bay. That really helps us for playoff purposes.”
Briggs scored eight points in Saturday’s second quarter to ignite a 13-8 run that ended with Ocean City holding a 20-14 advantage at the half, a lead they never relinquished.
Baruffi said his team “did some things differently” against Lower’s 2-3 zone defense in contrast to his squad’s 45-36 loss in Erma Feb. 20. He said his team took “a lot better shots this time” as evidenced by the superb percentage of makes by Briggs. The coach noted that, “defensively, we played the way we wanted to” in containing Caper star Lauren Holden to 11 points on just five for 22 shooting.
The Red Raiders, 21-4 heading into their top seeding in the South Jersey Group III Tournament, held opponents under 30 points a remarkable 16 times in their 25 contests. The 2013 state champions look to go deep into the playoffs with their youthful, yet well balanced 2015 squad.
“I thought we were a year away from the stuff we’re accomplishing,” said Baruffi, who is assisted by Mike Capelletti and volunteer Jeff Sobrinski. Grace (Sacco) can handle the ball and often controls the tempo of the game. Sierra has improved so much as a senior. Getting Karissa Bourbeau back as a senior was big after she missed a lot of last season. Nicole Piergross and Alexis Paone really came along for us. Nichole Fenton and Sadie Ford have contributed. And we have some outstanding freshmen who push the varsity in practice every day.”
Baruffi said the team will review shooting and defensive fundamentals each day in preparation for the tournament while spending some time on the specific opponent they’ll come up against. The routine of hard work and teamwork, goes on.
“It’s a total team effort with everybody contributing one way or another,” said Baruffi. “We’ve always had that mentality. We’ve always played that way. Some girls stood out more than others, but you can’t really focus on that one person against us. We spend a lot of time on that. We get everybody to develop their skills.”