Schalick suffers first loss of season in Diamond Classic; in a span on 16 hours, seniors come back from class trip, play the game, then go to prom
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
PITTSGROVE — Schalick was making its first appearance in the Diamond Classic in 29 years, but the circumstances of a senior year kept the Cougars from being their best.
It was a tired, rushed group of Cougars that suffered their first loss of the season, 10-4 to Haddonfield in the opening round of the 51st Classic Thursday. And there were reasons for it.
The team’s five seniors had gotten back in their South Jersey beds from the Senior Trip to Orlando at 3 a.m. Thursday morning. And they were back at school and the ballpark at 10 a.m. for the 3 p.m. game.
But that was only the half of it. The prom was scheduled to start at 6 p.m. and most of the players, seniors or otherwise, were going. The game ended at 5:30 and they still had to clean up and slip into their tuxes, meaning a lot of prom dates were waiting at the door.
Senior Luke Pokrovsky drew the start for the Cougars (10-1) against Haddons’ ace Marty Foust.
Understandably, Pokrovsky wasn’t sharp. He came out with one out in the fourth inning, down 4-0 after giving up three hits and striking out seven, but walking four and hitting one. He wound up being charged with five runs.
“I’m really tired,” he said. “I came out trying to do something for the team but it was hard. Very hard.
“It’s been a long week, trying to get everything done and then having this game scheduled right on prom and getting home at 3 o’clock and having to be going into school early it’s hard to play as a team, especially for seniors, when half our team is seniors. Nobody was ready to play today.”
Pokrovsky’s first inning was very Luke-like, with the left-hander setting down Haddonfield in order on 12 pitches on a fly to left and two strikeouts. He worked through two runners in scoring position with one out and bases loaded with two in the second inning. It started to get away in the third and that’s when Cougars coach Sean O’Brien knew the effects of the schedule had kicked in.
The Haddons (10-4) scored three runs in the third, fourth and fifth innings. Their three runs in the third came with only one hit. Half of their runs were unearned.
“As much as you don’t want to make excuses you could see when we did I/O we were kind of flat, not doing things we usually do,’ Cougars coach Sean O’Brien said. “I knew it could go either way where they’d come out and maybe surprise me or we’d come out and look like we hadn’t played in a week. That’s the way we looked.”
Woodstown faced a similar scheduling squeeze against a smaller Diamond Classic field last year and decided not to play. If his seniors wouldn’t have been back in time to play O’Brien might have considered declining the invitation, but with three decades between appearance if at all possible he wanted his players to have the tournament experience.
“It does make it hard with the short window you can play, but I think it was more unfortunate of the scheduling with the school having prom and the senior trip back-to-back,” O’Brien said. “It’s too long of a layoff and there’s too much could go wrong in that situation where the kids just don’t have time to recuperate.
“I just wanted for these guys, the seniors, to have an opportunity to play in it because they’ve worked hard to get to this moment so they deserve it. If they couldn’t play I probably would’ve thought about it, but as long as the seniors were out here we’re going to give it a shot.”
Lucas D’Agostino, another senior, followed Pokrovsky to the mound and worked an inning and a third. He collected his 100th career strikeout during his stint, but didn’t realize it until he was in the outfield after being lifted in the fifth.
“The part of the seniors being away for the whole week wasn’t even so much the tiredness, it was just the team chemistry,” D’Agostino said. “They weren’t here to lead practices, weren’t here to make sure we were ready for this game and prepared. The tiredness does come into effect off little sleep, but … it was more mental than physical.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge, for sure. We tried to keep our head up as much as possible, but it was tough definitely to keep the mental strength to do that.”
The Cougars, the No. 1 team in the South Jersey Group I power points standings, came to life in the fourth inning, finally getting on the board on Jamari Whitley’s RBI single. Whitley dropped a two-run single into right field in the seventh, too.
Photo by Brian Tortella
Riverview Sports News 