By Rich Fisher, Sports Editor
EWING — Sunday wasn’t a day to recap the weekend for the Hopewell Post 339 baseball team. It was a day to look at the big picture.
It was a tough weekend for Hopewell, which was eliminated from the New Jersey American Legion State Tournament when it dropped a 6-1 decision to Broad Street Park at Moody Park Sunday.
The loss came on the heels of a gut-punch loss on Saturday, in which Hopewell let a late lead slip away and lost to Flemington in the last inning on a wild pitch on an intentional walk.
But in the overall scheme of things, it was a season to remember for Hopewell under first-year coach Mike Coryell, as Post 339 reached the state’s Final 8 for just the second time in program history.
“Our goal this year was to make it here, we completed that goal and next year we want to get this far again,” said Will Karp, who was second on the team in batting with a .378 average during the regular season. “We’ve got a lot of returning guys next year.”
“I thought we had a great season,” said Cameron Cane, the Mercer County league’s Hap Puca Rookie of the Year award winner. “We had a lot of new kids on the team. Most of the guys played on the varsity team at Hopewell with me and putting the Pennington (School) kids in there really rounded out our lineup. We had a phenomenal year.”
All season long, Coryell said the goal was to reach the Final 8, and Hopewell did just that by climbing out of the District 4 loser’s bracket and defeating Cherry Hill 9-7 and Washington Township, 9-0.
Post 339 appeared ready to spring a big first-round upset on Saturday when it scored three runs in the top of the eighth for a 7-5 lead on Flemington. But Post 159 rallied for two in the eighth and then scored the fateful run in the ninth on the intended intentional walk.
On Sunday, BSP’s Cody Astbury pitched a gem to eliminate Hopewell.
Karp said there was no letdown from Saturday’s tough loss.
“That’s not the way you want to lose a game, but we came back wanting to win today, it just wasn’t enough,” he said. “We put yesterday behind us. We played a lot of games this year, we’re a confident team.
“Obviously we should have hit better than we did (against BSP). They made some nice plays on balls we did hit. I wouldn’t call it a hangover, I don’t want to make an excuse for a loss. We just didn’t get it done today.”
In the end it was a joyful season. “Jim Smiegocki had a great year pitching for us, having an ace like that held us together,” Karp said. “And we had a lot of energy, a lot of fun. We’re a very loose team. We like to laugh. We always had fun.”
