By doug mckenzie
Staff Writer
The Ocean Township High School baseball team entered this season with some lofty expectations.
While they did not meet all of their aspirations, head coach Del Dal Pra stills looks back on the spring as a successful one, after the Spartans finished 20-7, with an A North title and their second consecutive Monmouth County Tournament title.
"We expected to go deeper into the state tournament than we did," he admits. "We’ve been looking forward to this season for a few years, knowing that we’d have some three-year starters with good experience.
"It’s nice to get 20 wins, and win a pair of titles, but we would have liked to have done better in the state. You don’t get an offense like this every year."
That offense was among the tops in the Shore Conference. The Spartans batted .335 as a team, and scored runs consistently regardless of the opposition.
The offensive attack was led by senior third baseman Jimmy Simmons, a First Team All-State selection, who hit .556 this season with seven home runs and 23 RBIs. His seven home runs gave him 13 for his career, which set the new school record.
He finished his stellar three-year varsity career with a .435 average, with 87 hits in 200 at-bats, including 14 doubles and two triples. He also had 66 RBIs for his career and 11 stolen bases. His top performance game this season came when he belted three home runs in a game against Howell.
Simmons will attend George Washington University in the fall, and may try to walk on to the baseball team.
"He’s a kid that scored in the 1500s on the SAT, and is in the top 1 percent in the nation with his grades," Dal Pra said.
Senior shortstop Perry Schatzow, an All-County selection, was another star at the plate, finishing with a .440 average and 26 runs scored.
"Perry also had a .937 fielding percentage, which is pretty impressive for a high school shortstop," Dal Pra added.
Junior Mark Pappas was the other big bat, finishing the year with a .380 average and 18 RBIs.
But you don’t win with offense alone, and the Spartans had the complementary pitching this year.
Senior Gregg Krzyzanowski led the way on the hill with a 9-2 mark, to go along with 64 strikeouts and a 2.13 ERA. The hard-throwing senior had 64 strikeouts this year in just 69 innings pitched, and allowed just 21 earned runs and 59 hits.
Krzyzanowski, an All-Shore selection, will stay close to home in the fall, playing ball at Monmouth University.
Out of the bullpen, Schatzow was the stopper, accumulating a 3-0 mark with six saves and a minuscule .90 ERA. Schatzow will head to Kean University in the fall to continue his playing career.
Though the Spartans will certainly miss senior leaders like Simmons, Schatzow, Krzyzanowski, Josh White, Brian Klein, Dan Murphy and Kevin Dibling from this year, next year’s squad will return a solid nucleus of players as well.
"We’ll be a young team, with not many guys coming back," the coach said. "We’ll need to improve our team speed as well as our overall baseball skills.
"We had such a good hitting team this year that we didn’t need to do a lot of drills on bunting and stealing, and things like that. Next year, we’ll go back to small ball, where we hit-and-run, bunt and steal more. We didn’t do much of that this year."
The Spartans will start working on those aspects of the game this summer when they participate in the American Legion season. The Ocean team is sponsored by VFW Post 2226, and is coached by Dal Pra.
Notes… Among the local players to get All-Division nods this spring are Ocean’s Krzyzanowski, Simmons and Schatzow, and Long Branch’s Eric Nilson (utility) in A North; Red Bank’s Mike Young (pitcher) and Monmouth Regional’s Keith Cantwell (pitcher), Maurice Williams (infielder) and Mike Rosell (outfielder) in B North; Red Bank Catholic’s Rob Glowacki (pitcher) and Ryan Kalish (outfielder), and Rumson’s Gator Weston (pitcher), Billy Geltzeiler (infielder), Christian George (infielder) and David Wassell (outfielder) in A Central; and Shore Regional’s Anthony Dalia (pitcher), Tim Bonnett (infielder) and Marc Hyndsman (utility) in B Central.
In addition, Rumson’s George and Monmouth’s Rosell were named second team All-Shore, while Red bank’s Young, Ocean’s Schatzow and Shore’s Hyndsman were named to the third team.