Aubrey Shaffer continued her mastery on the mound in the WPIAL playoffs Tuesday for Thomas Jefferson.
And oh, what a masterful performance it was.
The junior right-hander who hasn’t allowed an earned run in two playoff games this season pitched her second consecutive three-hitter and struck out 12 to lead No. 2 seed Thomas Jefferson to an 8-0 Class 5A quarterfinals victory against No. 10 Plum at Gateway High School.
“She’s dominant in that circle,” TJ coach Heidi Karcher said. “Not a lot of people would say she’s a dominant pitcher, but believe me, she’s a dominant pitcher. She will shut teams down.”
Just ask Plum, which entered the game averaging nearly 10 runs per game. The Mustangs hit five home runs in their 12-2 victory against No. 7 Trinity in the first round.
“Plum is a very, very good hitting team,” Karcher said. “They’re all good teams when you get to this point in the playoffs.”
Jemma Danko homered and doubled and Sophia Janosko drove in three runs for Section 4-champion Thomas Jefferson (17-4), which won its third game in a row, dating to the final regular-season contest, and 11th in the past 12.
Zoie DeCostro collected three of TJ’s 13 hits.
The victory moves the Jaguars into the semifinals for the second time in three years against No. 11 North Hills on Thursday at a site and time to be determined. The Indians upset No. 3 Penn-Trafford, 8-3, in the quarterfinals.
Thomas Jefferson, which lost to Armstrong in the 2024 Class 5A championship game, has surrendered just 42 runs in 21 games this season (2.0 average), including its opening-round, 3-2 victory May 12 against No. 15 South Fayette.
Shaffer also pitched a three-hitter and struck out 15 against the Lions, whose runs were unearned.
She allowed just two Plum runners to reach second base, one on a throwing error in the sixth inning and the other on Sydney Pici’s two-out double in the seventh.
“Any university or college would be lucky to have her,” Karcher said. “She’s an incredible, incredible player, and she’s a great student, too. I know, because I have her in class, too.”
High-scoring Plum certainly couldn’t solve Shaffer’s offerings.
“TJ played well, and we didn’t play up to our potential,” Plum coach Phil DiLonardo said. “At least, I didn’t think so. But that’s a really good pitcher out there. She threw a really good game. Some days you run into that.”
Despite the season-ending shutout in the playoffs, the Mustangs (14-6) during the regular season finished in a second-place tie with Fox Chapel in Section 1, four games behind defending WPIAL champion Shaler.
“You tell them they had a great year,” DiLonardo said. “It ended on a sour note, but it was still a great year.”
Thomas Jefferson staked Shaffer to a 6-0 lead after three innings, scoring three times each in the second and third.
The Jaguars used five hits, including Janosko’s two-run single, to go in front 3-0 against Plum’s Riley Stephans, who yielded 10 hits and six runs in two-plus innings.
They added three more runs in the third, getting baserunners on the first five at-bats against Stephans before fellow Plum senior Mackenzie Marotta relieved and retired three of the final four TJ batters in the inning.
“I can help my defense a little bit more, and hopefully, they can come back with me with their bats,” Shaffer said. “The ball was really jumping off their bats.”
Thomas Jefferson added single runs against Marotta in the fifth with the help of two errors and a hit batsman and in the sixth on Danko’s fourth home run of the year.
“You work toward this all through winter practices,” Danko said, “and to see the results, it’s a really good feeling.”
Karcher was encouraged with her team’s deliberate approach at the plate in the Jaguars’ latest effort. After struggling to get by South Fayette in the previous game, Karcher emphasized patience.
“We didn’t hit well against South Fayette. … We weren’t going up there with the right approach,” she said. “Not every hit has to be a home run.”
After that, the Jaguars fared well in a scrimmage Friday against Class 6A Canon-McMillan, providing Karcher with renewed hope.
“It carried over to today,” she said.