BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer
The road to an impressive 10-3 start by the South Brunswick High School baseball team this season began on April 1 with a 4-0 win over Edison.
But the truth is, the seeds for this year’s success was really planted a year ago when the Vikings’ all-underclassmen team went through a 7-13 rebuilding campaign.
“They paid their dues last year,” said fourth-year head coach Leo Danik, who led South Brunswick to the GMC county championship his first season in 2002 and another solid season in 2003. “They learned their lessons last year, and it’s benefiting us this year.”
Indeed it has as the Vikings went into Wednesday’s game at Old Bridge tied for first place in the GMC Red Division with St. Joseph’s of Metuchen.
In fact, two of South Brunswick’s three losses this season have come against St. Joe’s, including a 5-0 setback on Monday that snapped a seven-game winning streak by the Vikings. Their last loss before that? You guessed it: also to St. Joseph, 4-3 on April 11, which dropped their record to 3-2 at the time.
“We won seven in a row after that and we were riding a nice run,” Danik said. “But we played seven games in 11 days and in high school that’s a lot of games. I think we just maxed out. It was just one of those days, but St. Joe’s did a good job. They came to play and their pitcher came to pitch.”
Did he ever. That pitcher, Matt Owens, took a 5-0 lead and a perfect game into the seventh inning. He retired the first batter, then hit Tim Barnshaw with a pitch to lose the perfect game. He then lost the no-hitter when the next batter, Kyle Breese, singled to right to put runners on first and second.
But Owens got the next batter on a dribbler to first, as the runners moved up to second and third, and retired the final batter on a pop-up to right center to end the game.
“We had been hitting the ball pretty good the last couple of games,” Danik said, “but against St. Joe’s we were just overmatched and out-pitched. He did a super job that day, and all you can do is take your hat off to him.
“Our pitcher, Travis Smart, pitched well enough to win, but he was just out-pitched. But we’ll bounce back. We had a good practice today [Tuesday], and everybody said, ‘Let’s go out and start a streak again. Let’s get another seven-game string going.’ So there was no panic or urgency. They got a lot of experience last year. This a veteran team now, and they’re not going to get rattled.”
Even this year’s team has only five seniors on the roster.
“We’ve got a nice mix,” Danik said. “We’ve got some nice seniors, but we got a good mix of juniors and sophomores, too, so it’s not a one-year deal. We’ve got some kids looking to break into the lineup.”
The strength of the team is its pitching.
“Our pitching is very strong,” Danik agreed. “We’ve had, at any one time, five guys go out on the mound. We don’t have one guy we call our ace; we have three guys we can send out there.”
Breese, a junior, is 4-0 this season with a 0.52 ERA and 31 strikeouts in 27 innings. Tyler Chromey, another junior, is 2-1 with a 2.19 ERA and 24 strikeouts in 16 innings. Smart, a senior, is 3-2; while Ryan Webb, another senior, is 1-0; and sophomore Matt Forthun has also seen action.
“Our team ERA is 2.87,” Danik noted. “For a high school team to be under three is pretty good. Except for one game when we got wiped out by East Brunswick, we’ve been in every game.”
The Vikings lost to East Brunswick 11-1 back on April 7, but came back to beat their neighbors 1-0 in eight innings in a rematch last Friday, the last of their seven straight wins.
Pitching hasn’t been the only strength on this team, however. South Brunswick has shown it can hit the ball pretty good, too. John Haas, a sophomore third baseman, leads the club with a .471 batting average and has driven in 10 runs.
Meanwhile, Smart is hitting .400; junior center fielder Russ Grimes is at .355 with 11 RBIs; Barnshaw, a senior catcher, and Breese, a junior right fielder, are both batting .333; and Forthun, who also plays outfield, is at .321.
Breese also tops the team with 12 RBIs.
“We don’t have one or two guys who get all our hits,” Danik said. “One day one guy gets a hit, and the next day another guy will get a hit. Everyone contributes.”
Shortstop Dan Gurney and left fielder Bobby Fiesta, both juniors, have also been key contributors.
“And our backup catcher, Mike Mariano, could start for almost any other team,” Danik said. “He’s only a sophomore and he’s a big strong kid who has done a great job but, unfortunately, he’s behind Tim Barnshaw, who’s a three-year starter. But he’s ready to step in and sometimes I may DH him.
“At any one time I could have five sophomores on the field.”
South Brunswick is in the midst of a very busy week. Besides Monday’s game against St. Joe’s and yesterday’s against Old Bridge, the Vikings host Perth Amboy today and travel to J.P. Stevens on Friday. Then on Monday, they host Piscataway to close out their GMC Red Division schedule.
“We have a very good chance to compete for the title,” Danik, whose team has 12 regular-season games left overall, said. “The Red Division is very competitive and any team in the division is very capable of winning it. Right now we’re ranked second in the county, but you can throw that out the window. Everybody has a good team and a very good pitcher who could shut you down.
“But we have as good a chance to win the division as anyone.”