Wall Captures First Sectional Title In Eleven Years

WALL – The Crimson Knights found themselves in the same position they were in a year ago when they hosted Allentown in the Central Jersey Group III final.

In that game, Allentown jumped out to an early 4-0 lead and went on to beat Wall 6-5 forcing the Knights to watch the Redbirds celebrate on their own home field.

With a red-hot Northern Burlington team visiting Wall on Friday in this year’s NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III final the Crimson Knights were hell-bent on not allowing another visiting team to celebrate on its home turf and they sent that message to the Greyhounds by scoring early and scoring often.

Wall banged out nine runs in the first three innings to take an early 9-0 lead and rolled to 10-2 victory over the Greyhounds to capture its eighth sectional title in program history and its since 2008.

“You wish it had been a year earlier to get that under our belt, but I think that makes this year that much sweeter,” said Wall head coach Todd Schmitt, who earlier this week picked up his 400th career coaching win. “There was a little pressure. We’ve been here twice in the last couple of year’s and we weren’t able to get it done. For this senior group to get this done I can’t reiterate the point enough of being able to do this on our home field after watching Allentown celebrate here last year.”

Six starting positional players and two of its top three starting pitchers are seniors for Wall this year so Friday’s game was a do-or-die situation for them and last year’s loss to Allentown was still fresh in their minds.

“This year was the same as last year,” said senior third baseman and Rutgers commit Grant Shulman, who’s averaging .521 at the plate and leads the team with 16 RBI and 25 hits as well as being a invaluable relief pitcher. “We lost in the semifinals of the Shore Conference Tournament and got to the finals of the state sectional but lost that too and we just couldn’t repeat that as seniors. We were all there and we’re all back and we just couldn’t do that, so we just put the pedal to the metal right away and just did what we had to do.

“We’ve been playing together since sixth, seventh and eighth grade and we were all like, when we get to high school we’re going to be great. So, if we didn’t win this or any of them, it would’ve been underachieving. But we got it done today and it’s just a dream come true for us.”

Northern Burlington (13-8) entered the tournament as the as the 11th seed but upset No. 6 Pennsauken 4-2 in the first round before pulling upsets agaisnt third-seeded Ocean Township 4-3 in quarterfinals and second-seeded Jackson Memorial 5-3 in the semifinals – all on the road.

“They were the one’s rolling, we just lost yesterday (SCT semifinal),” said Schulman. “So to get on them early and (get) their moral down you could see it and we just kept tacking on (runs) every inning.”

Senior shortstop John Volpe, who finished 2-for-3 with a walk and three runs scored, got things started leading off the bottom of the first with single to right and went to third on a line-drive base hit by Schulman, who finished 2-for-2 with two walks, two runs scored and two RBI.

Junior left fielder Sean Nocera then followed a walk by sophomore designated hitter Jay Bant with a two-run single to left field for a quick 2-0 lead and all the momentum moving forward.

Starting pitcher Teddy Sharkey sailed through an eight-pitch second inning before Wall put up another three runs in the bottom half of the inning.

Senior second baseman Dylan Richey reached on an error leading off the inning and came around to score on a wild pitch to make it 3-0. Back-to-back walks to Sharkey and Schulman led to a Bant RBI single to right that chased starter Jake Babuscak from the game after just 1 2/3 innings.

With Schulman now at third and Bant at first, Schulman scored on a double steal attempt crossing the plate before Bant was tagged out in a run-down pushing the score to 5-0 after two innings.

Sharkey ran into a little trouble in the top of the third issuing a two-out walk and a single but Richey knocked down a hard liner by Julian Lopez and flipped the ball to Volpe covering second base for the final out of the inning.

The Knights put the game out of reach scoring four times in the bottom of the third as their lead ballooned to 9-0.

A walk to senior catcher David Howarth, who leads the team with .543 average, an infield single to senior first baseman Tanner Powers and a passed ball put runners at second and third with one out. Richey then hit a high-chopper that the pitcher fielded but had no play at first allowing a run to score.

Volpe then walked to load the bases and Sharkey followed with another walk to bring in the innings second run before Schulman broke the game wide open drilling a two-out, two-run single to centerfield for a 9-0 lead.

“It was great,” said Starkey of his early run support. “Once we put that two spot up it made me feel better and I had more confidence in my pitches and it just make me want to play the game more and have fun.”

The Florida State commit who is 7-0 with a 0.85 ERA wasn’t as sharp as he has been struggling a bit with his command while issuing five walks in 5 2/3 innings before reaching his pitch limit. But he battled and did not give up an earned run and struck out eight on 112 pitches.

Schulman then came in for Starkey with runners on second and third and two outs and promptly struck out Ryan Dromboski for the third out. He then gave up a walk before recording the final out of the game on a ground ball in the seventh.

Three walks and two errors in the top of the fourth led to the Greyhounds only two runs of the day.

“Dave (Howarth) did a real good job behind the plate, mixing speeds, inside, outside, up,” said Sharkey. “The mound wasn’t working well for me today, but I just had to make some key adjustments.”

“He did a great job on the mound,” said Schmitt of Sharkey’s performance. “Even when he fell behind in the count, he battled back out of it. He focused in and did the job he had to do.”

Wall tacked on its tenth run in the fifth when Volpe led off the inning with a single through the 5-6 hole, stole second, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on Bants run-scoring grounder.

The Scarlet Knights (25-4) – ranked seventh in the NJ.com Top 20 - entered the season ranked No. 1 in the Shore Conference and with a lot of fanfare surrounding them but hit a slight bump in the road in late April.

Wall opened the season going 7-0 but went 3-3 in their next six before righting the ship and reeling off 14 straight wins.

“We lost three game in ten days in which we had the lead going into the seventh and the other teams walked it off and we lose 1-0 to CBA,” said Schmitt. “We kind of regrouped after that and the kids worked hard and they wanted this, there’s no question about it.”

The Scarlet Knights winning streak was halted in Wednesday’s 5-3 loss to Manalapan in the SCT semifinals.

“Last year we were in this position,” said Sharkey. “I’m not going to forget that feeling, ever. This year is the comeback season and we worked hard to get here. My teammates hit the ball really well, I did my job on the mound, and it all worked out and we won.”

“Two year’s in a row we went 0-for-2 on these days,” said Schmitt. “After yesterday we brought the seniors in and just said, ‘hey, we’ve got to wipe this off and get ready to go back at it tomorrow, because this is for a championship.’”

Wall is now positioned to win its first Group III title since 2004 when that team won the “Quadruple Crown” (overall state group championship, conference title, county title and division title) and are set up perfectly with Monmouth University-bound Trey Dombroski (9-1, 0.26 ERA), who has allowed just two earned runs in 54 innings pitched, potentially able to pitch in both the NJSIAA Group III semifinal and final should they get there.

“I think we’re definitely the front-runner to win the whole thing,” said Schulman. “Trey is arguably one of the best pitchers in the state. With him on the mound we feel like we can play with anyone and will play with anyone.”

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