While both the 11 and 12-year-old Little League All-Stars in West Windsor seemed to fall just slightly short in each of their respective District 12 tournaments earlier this summer, the later tournaments proved to be the most fruitful and the most rewarding for West Windsor’s young ball players.##M:[more]##
The West Windsor Little League organization ended up with four tournament titles and one runner-up spot. Last month, the 10-year-old All Stars came in second in the District 12 tournament and the 8s took first in the Lawrence Tournament.
Since then, West Windsor teams have added three championships to their arsenal of accomplishments.
WW 8s. The 8-year-olds again claimed the championship, this time in the Bordentown Tournament, with a 13-3 blowout over HTRBA on July 30.
Manager Steve Lichtenstein says the number one contributing factor to the team’s success this post-season was hands-down its depth of talent. “When we played the other teams, we would always wear them down,” he said. “If we can keep the games close early, I always thought we would have a chance.”
Despite this, he says, the Bordentown tournament was very tough, but the team still produced wins over Millstone-Roosevelt, Robbinsville, and HTRBA. “They gave us good scares in all of those games, although we came out on top,” Lichtenstein said.
“The good thing is that we have a lot of very good players, but we didn’t have one star we relied on,” he explains. “A lot of these elimination-round games are stacked up back-to-back. There’s only a 50-pitch count limit on 8-year-old pitchers.”
And because the team had three reliable pitchers in Ben Goldstein, Matthew Michibata, and David Philbin, the team was able to be flexible to give each pitcher a break without sacrificing talent. The batting lineup was also filled with power hitters, like Blake Brown, who went 20-for-24 throughout the Lawrence tournament. There were six players with on-base percentages of over .600, and Dylan Welch led the team in RBIs.
Lichtenstein said it was a culmination of the players’ talent with the help of good coaches, like Mike Strype and Jason Welch. “They were very instrumental at the practices because that’s where they really get better,” he said. “We work these kids pretty hard. It was almost every day that we didn’t play, we had practices. Those guys helped them become better players, not just individually, but collectively.”
WW 12s. The 12s defeated Lawrence, 7-0, to claim the championship in the HTRBA Tournament on July 27. The game was highlighted by a triple play in the third inning and by the team’s impressive hitting. Josiah Foster went 2-for-3, Scott Feryus had two RBIs, and Mark Sitek had a double.
Junya Yokoyama, a key player, hit a homerun in almost every game throughout the post season. Heading into the HTRBA tournament pool play, West Windsor found itself in the loser’s bracket early on, but hit a turning point when Yokoyama again came through with a grand slam home run when the team was down by four runs with two outs in the last inning in a later game, which set up the team for the championship round, said manager Mark Sitek.
“After that, we gained some momentum,” said Sitek. “We thought we had a chance to win, and then we did. In a couple of the games, we had some late-inning heroics.”
That game proved to be the turning point leading up to the championship game. Sitek says winning the championship is also positive because “hopefully the kids had enough fund that they’ll come back next year.”
“We had several 11-year-olds playing on the team, and that’s going to give them a lot of confidence to come back next year and try to win a district crown,” he said.
WW 11s. The excitement in West Windsor at the end of July was followed by the 11s’ thrilling 7-6 win over Bordentown on August 5 to also end their season with a title.
They were able to get revenge on several teams that had narrowly kept them out of the final six in the district tournament. The team went 5-1 in the tournament, coming from behind in three of those games.
In the preliminary round, the team defeated West End, 17-2, and Ewing, 20-6. It came up just short against Cranbury-Plainsboro, 9-8, after coming from seven runs down. However, the team bounced back and defeated Millstone-Roosevelt, 9-4, to avenge a 5-3 loss in the early district tournament. The 11s then made their way to the semifinals, where they knocked off Sunnybrae, 8-5.
Then came the championship game, and a chance to avenge its earlier district tournament loss to Bordentown. The team opened with a 2-0 lead in the first inning and added five runs in the second inning.
The championship was the perfect finale for a season that has stretched since February, especially since the expectations for the 11-year-old All Stars weren’t so high going into the post season. “Four of the best 11-year-old players from West Windsor were playing on our 12-year-old team,” says 11s Coach Andrew Chapman. “They really did overachieve by going into that second tournament” and coming out with a championship.
Still, Chapman says he is not surprised of his team’s feat. “They just had a couple of games in the earlier tournament that they could have won but didn’t,” he says. “They just didn’t make the plays and didn’t make the hits. By the time they got to the later tournament, they just picked it up.”
He points to the extra inning game of the first tournament against Bordentown. “We could have won that game,” Chapman says. “We didn’t get the key hits, and we gave up a key run. The second time around, we got a couple of key hits. We came out in the long run.”
Of course, the team had its key players. Sidd Kumar, who drove in the first two runs in the championship game with a near-miss home run, hit .690 during the all-star post season tournament play and led the team with 14 RBIs. “He was clearly the MVP of this team,” Chapman says. “He was just knocking the cover off the ball all summer. The other teams couldn’t get him out.”
Robert Armus, Matt Duplak, Justin Kertes, and Austin Lindner all hit over .400 for the tournament. The team’s pitching also helped lead the way, with James Nabial and Armus at the helm. Armus had a complete-game victory against Sunnybrae in the semi-finals, and Nabial tossed a complete game victory against Millstone-Roosevelt in the semifinals.
Chapman says he couldn’t ask for a better ending to the season. Now, he says, the players are ready for a rest. “It’s tremendous for them to finish the season with four consecutive wins and the tournament championship,” he said. “As a league, we really had a very successful post season. As far as this team is concerned, they were scrappy, but they came from behind a couple of times, and they did manage to beat teams that had a lot of talent. These kids had heart.”
Cranbury-Plainsboro Little Leagues. The excitement in the late summer tournaments was not just reserved for West Windsor. Two Cranbury-Plainsboro Little League teams were making their own waves.
The Cranbury-Plainsboro 10-year-old All Stars took second place in the Lawrence Tournament after a really close game against HTRBA, where the team fell 10-9 on August 2.
The team went 3-1 in pool play, beating Nottingham, North Trenton, and HTRBA and losing to Millstone-Roosevelt. In the elimination round, where the team beat Sunnybrae, 14-4. The team then got revenge and shut out Millstone-Roosevelt, 10-0.
The team was on a strong roll at that time, despite losing one of its starting pitchers, Hayden Reyes, to a broken clavicle. This meant the team had to rely on Zach Crossey and other pitchers, to keep in line with the pitch-count limitation, said Manager Jeff Shanaberger. Shanaberger said he got good effort from Brandon Kocher, who started and pitched two and two-thirds innings and was relieved by Will Brossman.
In the championship game, the team ran out to a 6-0 lead in the first inning, but HTRBA eventually tied the game in the third inning. The game remained tied until the fifth inning, when Cranbury-Plainsboro pulled ahead 7-6 and added two more in the top of the sixth. It all came down to the bottom of the sixth, with two outs. However, HTRBA pushed across the tying and winning run.
Still, Shanaberger points to the positive achievements throughout the tournament. Every single player, including the reserve players, had hits against Sunnybrae. The teammates themselves have played with each other since on the 8s, and every year, they have consistently, through six tournaments, made it out of pool play. “They’ve always stumbled in the first bracket play game and were eliminated,” he says. “But this time, they played strong and made it all the way to the championship game.”
Since most of the team consists of 9-year-olds, most are eligible to return to the 10s next year, he says. He also says the loss after coming so close in the championship game will be able to teach them early on that everyone has to deal with disappointment, and hopefully it will make them stronger for next year.
The Cranbury-Plainsboro 11-year-olds also ended their season on a high note, with a third place finish in the West End Tournament on August 3 with a loss to Bordentown, 8-6.
