Montgomery claims state baseball crown
By: Justin Feil
SHAMONG The Montgomery 10-year-old all-stars entered the Cal Ripken Southern Jersey state championship a team confident in its ability and left clutching the trophies to prove it.
The 10s became the second team in Montgomery Baseball history to win the state title when they pounded host Indian Mills, 10-0, in five innings Thursday to complete a remarkable run. Montgomery did not allow a run in three out of its four state tournament games.
"Six out of the last eight games have been shutouts," said Montgomery manager Tom Verducci. "We’re a good team because we can pitch it and we can catch it. On nights like tonight when we hit the ball, we’re a really good team."
Montgomery had won twice by 2-0 scores to open states and by a run in extra innings in the winners’ bracket final last Tuesday, but made sure it wouldn’t be close with a seven-run first inning Thursday. Montgomery sent 11 batters to the plate. The first four batters reached base and scored in the inning. Andrew Link had a pair of hits in the inning, a single and double.
"I was very confident," said Link, who also pitched the fifth inning. "They had to win two games against us and we only had to win one."
Indian Mills came out of the losers’ bracket but would have had to top Montgomery twice Thursday for the state crown. Instead, it was Montgomery that closed out the only game of the night early. They scored their eighth run in the second inning when Greg Kocinski collected his second of four hits on the day and scored on a groundout. The damage to Indian Mills’ chance by then had already been done thanks to a first-inning explosion.
"It gave us more confidence," Kocinski said. "We knew we had a great shot at winning. We just had to keep it up."
They did. Montgomery scored a ninth run in the fourth inning on Mike Mankowski pinch-hit single and finished the game off when Link doubled to open the bottom of the fifth inning and Kocinski’s singled him home to end the game by the 10-run rule.
"Right when I saw it hit the bat," Link said, "I knew it was going to drop in."
The win sends Montgomery on to the Mid-Atlantic Regional that begins Friday in Westland Hills, N.Y., near Albany. Montgomery is the second team in four years to win the Cal Ripken 10s Southern Jersey championship, following the current Montgomery 14-year-old group.
"They set the standard," Verducci said. "Robert Johnson’s brother is on that (14s) team. When we hosted regionals last year, they knew about it. All they have to do is look up at the concession stand at the complex and see those plaques that are up there, what that group has done. They set the standard.
"Even if these kids don’t know those kids personally, they know it’s something attainable. They made that dream something that is possible, that group of kids (did). Hopefully our group is thinking the same thing."
As good as the 14s were as 10-year-old all-stars, this year’s 10s has a chance to be better. Four years ago, Montgomery did not win the Mid-Atlantic Regional. This Montgomery group could be the first to bring home that plaque though no one was quite thinking along those lines Thursday.
"I was just focused on this game," Link said. "We have a chance, I think."
The Montgomery 10s have a balance of pitching and defense that has dominated the District One and Southern Jersey tournaments. As Thursday’s game showed, they can also put together quite an offense.
"We didn’t hit great in the first two games and then against Cherry Hill on Tuesday, we hit really well," Kocinski said. "Then, we just started hitting really well today again.
"We’ve pretty much always relied on our defense and pitching and not always our hitting. When we hit well, we know we can win. There are pretty good teams in the regionals so it’s going to be hard."
If Montgomery continues to rely on its basic formula of pitching and defense, it will stay in every game. Thursday, Cameron Hoos pitched two innings of no-hit ball, in the next two innings Ben Verducci allowed just a bloop single to right field that Adam Kornberg nearly made a spectacular catch on, and then Link retired the final three outs and scored the game-ending run for a fitting finale.
"Andrew Link had a great tournament," Tom Verducci said. "He had three hits today. I don’t think he gave up any runs.
"He’s a strike thrower. He goes right after people. He keeps the ball down and he’s aggressive in the strike zone. When he gets ahead of people, he won’t lay it over. He’ll work the corners. He gave up no runs and pitched nine innings in this. The last seven innings, he gave up no hits."
Link is one of five new players that joined a Montgomery 9s team that last year was runner-up in districts. Thanks to the change in age rules, Link, who played on the Montgomery 10s team last year, had the chance to play at the 10-year-old level once again and made the most of it.
"We didn’t even win districts," Link said. "This year, we won states."
Kocinski was part of last year’s 9s group that moved up this year. And though they didn’t win districts either last year, he was confident that with the new additions, Montgomery could do well.
"Last year," he said, "we got to states also and did pretty well. This year, I thought we had a better team so I thought we had a better chance of winning. And I guess we did.
"I was on this team, the 9s, last year. But there’s five new kids. We were pretty good to start with and added them on. We’re getting better as we go along."
Verducci agrees. From when the group came together in the spring to now, it has matured as a unit. By moving on to regionals, it is moving into territory never expected in the spring.
"I just know how hard it is even to win districts," Verducci said. "And I knew it was a special group because they’re so coachable. I think that’s the big thing. They started out a good team and they’ve come even faster than I thought.
"As the summer went on, I thought it was possible. But to be honest, to think they’d be state champions when we first started out, it was a group that hadn’t played together, that wasn’t on my mind."
Going into Thursday, however, Montgomery felt supremely confident it would come away with the title. Winning by the 10-run rule just topped off the thrill.
"We’ve been talking about all our close games and this one we could really enjoy," Verducci said. "They came ready to play that first inning. We got (seven) in the first inning and for a team that’s been playing these nail-biters, that was huge. They were so relaxed before the game, I had a feeling they were going to play well and they showed it in the first inning."
And they walked away with the trophies to prove that, for the second time in league history, Montgomery is the 10-year-old champion of Cal Ripken in Southern Jersey.