WEEK of: APRIL 11-17, 2011
Rookie catcher MARISSA BARISO (Hewitt, NJ/West Milford) is the NJCU Women’s Athlete of the Week for the second week in a row and the second time in her career after she batted .467 (7-of-15) in four games for the Gothic Knights. Four of her seven hits went for extra bases. She added three runs and two RBIs with two doubles, one triple and one homerun and owned a monster .933 slugging percentage for the week.
On April 14, NJCU lost a pair of one-run games to the College of Staten Island, 4-3 and 6-5, but Bariso was impressive, batting a combined 5-for-7 in two games. In game one, she was 2-for-3 with one run. Bariso carried the team in game two, hitting 3-for-4 with a run and two doubles. In the sixth inning, she hit a double off the left field fence and helped the Knights draw within two runs. In the seventh inning she had a two-out single and represented the tying run but was stranded on third base.
In an 11-6 loss to New Jersey Athletic Conference foe William Paterson University on April 15, Bariso smashed her sixth homerun of the season and helped NJCU pull within one homer of equaling the single-season record of 15. Bariso was 2-for-4 with two RBIs, one homer, one triple and one run in the game. She already owns the single-season program record for homeruns by a rookie and became only the second player in the 31-year history of the program to hit at least six homeruns in a season. The only other player to accomplish the feat was all-time great Jen Barletta, who did it three years in a row from 1999-2001, including a program record seven in 2000. She did not have a hit in game two, snapping a seven-game hitting streak.
As of April 17, Bariso is second in the NJAC in homeruns with six. Also in the conference, she ranks second in total bases (62), fourth in slugging percentage (.674), fifth in RBIs (23) and triples (2), seventh in runs scored (23), eighth in hits (34), 17th in steals (6), 18th in doubles (6), 20th in batting average (.370) and walks (9), 23rd in on-base percentage (.433). She has a .968 fielding percentage behind the plate.
