The West Windsor-Plainsboro North and South baseball teams have combined for just one winning season over the past decade. That is usually a sign that either the feeder systems are not providing strong players; or that there is just a lack of interest in the sport.
But a group of 13-year-olds are hoping to change that after a strong showing this past summer.
Managed by Kevin Holden and Tom O’Connor, the 14U NJ Pirates won the B Division of Montgomery’s Covino Tournament with a team made up primarily of hometown kids. It was a marked difference from the squads they were playing, which – as most travel teams do – consisted of players from multiple towns.
The majority of players were on West Windsor’s District 12 All-Star teams, which Holden and O’Connor had managed since they were young. The Pirates were created by O’Connor, who has coached in the WWLL for 20 years, and who knows the ins and outs of travel ball and tournaments.
“Some of the kids are on other teams and some play other sports, but they prioritize The NJ Pirates because they are all friends,” O’Connor said.
“We wanted to give these kids a place to keep playing,” Holden added. “Some of them do play travel, so they’re doing a lot of weekend tournaments. Others are doing rec and local stuff on the school team. This was kind of like the sweet spot between the two so they could keep playing as a team and having fun.”
That was the main priority – keep childhood friends together to have fun, and the results were secondary.
But, those results turned out pretty cool when the Pirates went 5-0 in the Covino Tournament. They won all three pool games, then claimed the semifinal and final for the championship. Because of their success, Holden and O’Connor have them registered for some higher level tournaments.
“Right now we are focused on the future,” O’Connor said. “We are doing The Ripken ‘Around The Horn Tournament’ this fall and we have a summer tournament in Atlanta planned.”
Had the team gone 0-3 in pool play, it might have been a different story.
“If we had three tough games and lost there’s not a lot of motivation,” Holden said. “But everybody gets excited when you have success. It makes it more fun. In the games we played we had a taste of everything.”
And because a bunch of them are headed for WW-P schools, it has to make WW-P North baseball coach Robert Kinloch and WW-P South coach Joe Gambino pretty happy.
“Everyone is practicing together,” said Nyan Holden, Kevin’s son. “We’re all making each other better, all the players are helping each other out, pointing out flaws in their game and helping each other get better. I think it will help the high school team.”
The team consists of Holden, Stellan Song, Zander Raoof, Sarang Chong, Jackson O’Connor, Nicky Carrabba, Sawyer Klein, Adrian Marrero, Cameron Kelleman, Alex Dehne, Shivam Garg, Lucca Dehne, Colin Morton and Henry Hamm.
West Windsor started pool play with a win over Montgomery as Song threw a 7-inning complete game, allowing one run and striking out five. Klein followed with a complete game in a victory over Princeton, and Song and Holden combined to limit Bridgewater to three runs.
In the semifinals, the Pirates prevailed over Montgomery in nine innings as Klein threw five and Kelleman tossed four. Garg came up huge in the title game against Princeton, allowing four runs in a complete-game, 13-4 victory that included 12 strikeouts.
While it was nice to get a championship, Holden admitted it was not a high-level tournament with a bunch of future Division I recruits. But there was talent and the local players proved to be the best.
“It’s not super intense, we didn’t try to make it like districts or anything else,” Holden said. “We found the right level of play for our kids and then just got them to keep playing together. It was a lot of fun.
“Tom and I have been trying to find places that allow kids to play who aren’t making baseball their top top priority, with travel on weekends and all that. It was just keeping them together and giving them a place to play.
“It was still good competition. It was a good tournament. We had good games throughout the tournament.”
Nyan Holden loved winning the championship, especially after mostly the same group of players did not fare too well in District 12 play as 12-year-olds.
“It was awesome,” he said. “Last year we had a pretty similar team and came in third. This year we had a couple new players and we were playing pretty good. It was all our friends we’ve been playing baseball with since we were little. It was really awesome to win the whole thing.”
What changed in a year?
“I think mostly everyone improved,” Nyan said. “A bunch of kids got more serious about baseball, travel and stuff. And we all played on school teams so we practiced a lot more and improved a lot more from districts to the Pirates team.”
What made it especially significant is that, aside from any players who might go to a prep or parochial school, most of the team will be back for another year of playing at Grover and Community middle schools before heading to the highschool level. The camaraderie and chemistry they build now can only help down the line.
“I thought it was pretty awesome; it’s friends we’ve known all our lives that I played baseball with,” Nyan Holden said. “ We know each other really well, we’ve all been over each other’s house. It’s really cool. We hang out every day, play baseball like we always do, except now we’re playing against other teams more competitively.”
Holden’s father agreed, saying “These kids are playing middle school games, flag football in the backyard, they’re at the pool all summer. They’re a crew that’s hanging out all the time. That was the goal. We’re super excited the way everything turned out. That’s exactly what we wanted to build.”
The success is a by-product of that, which is why O’Connor decided to look into some higher level tournaments.
“Tom’s been through it before with two older sons,” Holden said. “You see a lot when you’re going through it for the first time, but he’s already seen it. His brother coaches in Georgia, so we’ll go there in the spring, and we have the Ripken Tournament in October.
“Winning (the Covino Tournament) motivated us to keep doing it. Again, it’s just keeping them together. I know we’re traveling a little more than we thought we would originally, but the results have been a lot of fun. So it’s like ‘Hey, if you guys want to do this. . .’ It’s kind of like the off-season for the school team. The goal is to have them keep playing ball together.”
Which is something the high school coaches have to be pleased with.
The the 14U NJ Pirates recently won the B Division of Montgomery’s Covino Tournament. At rear are Cameron Kelleman (left), Alex Dehne, Shivam Garg, Nyan Holden, Lucca Dehne and Colin Morton .In front are Stellan Song (left), Zander Raoof, Sarang Chong, Jackson O’Connor, Nicky Carrabba, Sawyer Klein and Adrian Marrero. Not pictured is Henry Hamm.,
