Joe Beczo wasn’t looking for anything too extravagant. The manager’s only wish for his Sunnybrae 11-year-old All Star team was for it to compete as hard as it could from the first out to the last.
The Yardville Gang did just that, and things went a lot further than Beczo ever dreamed.
“All I wanted to do this year was really be competitive, and that’s it,” the manager said. “But everything started clicking at the end.”
Sunnybrae won the second District 12 championship in league history by taking a 4-2 victory over Nottingham in the championship round. The ‘Brae then went on to win its Section 3 opener before falling in two straight games in Sayreville.
“It was a great All-Star season,” said Beczo, who was one of the Colonial Valley Conference’s top pitchers for Trenton High in the late 1970s. “Winning the districts was more than I could expect.
“In the sectionals, we had two bad innings out of 20, and we lost 5-4 in eight innings to Old Bridge, who went on to win the sectionals. This year was a year to remember, and I hope it continues next year. I hope the kids enjoyed the ride.”
Sunnybrae was led by the hitting of Jake Kmiec, Elvis Ortiz and 10-year-old Connor Luckie, while the pitching staff was anchored by Jared Werts, Ryan Beczo, Nick Potocki and Travis Holonics. Tim Toomer, Werts and Kmiec all homered during the All-Star season, while other contributors included Jake Jones, Zack Posivak, Jason DeAngelo and Christian Lucas.
It is a crew that went 6-0 and won the West End Tournament as 9-year-olds, before going 3-2 in both the districts and a late-season tournament last year.
This season, after Sunnybrae won the winner’s bracket in District 12, it needed to beat loser’s bracket winner Nottingham once for a crown. Nottingham took the first finals game, though, with a 17-6 win, forcing a winner-take-all second game.
The Hamilton Square boys appeared to have all the momentum, but Jared Werts pitched four-plus strong innings in the second finals game, and Sunnybrae took a 4-2 win for league’s first district title since the 11-year-olds won it in 2010.
“I had my doubts,” Beczo said. “I thought if these kids come out flat and if Nottingham goes up quickly we would be in trouble. But they’re 11-year-old kids. That stuff doesn’t stick with them like it does with us.”
While winning a championship was nice, defeating Nottingham made it particularly satisfying considering the successful history of that league. Sunnybrae President Rob Cislak said it is a friendly, respectful rivalry.
“Looking back on those two 11-year-old teams, Nottingham won as eights, we won as nines, they won as 10s, we won at 11s,” Cislak said. “We’ve had success at this level. We’ve been right there with them.
“It was nice, after the championship game the kids knew each other. They were talking to each other. Even the coaches were joking around. Their guy (Bill James) was talking with our guys. They’ve been going at it for a while now. They know each other.”
Sunnybrae’s championship was not only big for the team itself, but for an entire program that is trying to establish itself in a township that includes perennial power Nottingham and vastly improved HTRBA. Another bright spot is that the Sunnybrae 10-year-olds were second in District 12 this year, losing 9-5 to Princeton in the finals.
Cislak, who has been with Sunnybrae for 12 years and served as president for the past seven, feels things are starting to come around.
“We’ve had a couple of age groups that have won tournaments the past few years,” Cislak said. “Not just in districts, but we’ve won eight- and nine-year-old titles. When you see the progression at the different levels, it seems like we’re building a strong baseball program.
“We’ve had two district titles in four years and a second place this year. Our 10-year-old team was strong, they came in together as seven year olds and that was our biggest group we had in years. We have increased our numbers. People are coming in and doing the right things with coaching and its taking the program to the next level.”
Like most little leagues, Sunnybrae must contend with travel ball luring some of its players away. When Cislak became president in 2007, registration was just 202 players while the Hamilton A’s travel organization had six teams in several age groups.
“We knew we had to do something,” he said. “We’ve pretty much become a year-round program now. We do things in the off-season. We’ve tried to increase fall ball. We have a lot of the Steinert guys doing clinics, and the Hamilton West coaches are helping out.
“It’s basically building the program from the ground up. We’re getting more training for coaches and kids. If they’re not going to clinics at our place they’re going to other places, like Gallagher Baseball, and getting some work.”
Sunnybrae’s growth was impressive and hit 280 players in 2010, with 80 new families coming on board. It has leveled off since then, and was around 235 this year. But Cislak is excited about a strong 7-year-old turnout.
“We had 27 kids come out for the seven-year-old All Stars,” he said. “That’s a great starting point. That’s a lot of kids who are playing a lot of baseball, learning the game and building on that. They practice every day, and they had some success this year, so if they keep working they’ll be great players.”
Between that and this year’s District 12 success, Cislak sees a bright future.
“We won a district twice in four years and took second this year, and I think the stigma is gone now,” the president said. “It’s no longer ‘We’ll lose to Nottingham, or Robbinsville.’
“It’s more like ‘We can win this, it’s good.’ Five or six years ago we had strong teams but they didn’t believe they could win these things. Now we’ve reached that level, we’ve gotten over that hump.”
In doing so, Sunnybrae proved it can be much more than just competitive.
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