Style to dye for

Pennsville uses late rally to take down Lenape, play reminds coach they’re buying into ideals he’s preaching 

SATURDAY BASEBALL
Pennsville 5, Lenape 4
Schalick 24, Paulsboro 1
Delran 6, Woodstown 4

By Al Muskewitz 
Riverview Sports News

PENNSVILLE — Pennsville rallied from an early four-run deficit to score five runs in its final two bats and beat Lenape 5-4 Saturday afternoon. The way the Eagles came back reminded coach Matt Karr of all the things he’d been preaching to his players about winning games after he found himself getting frustrated with their recent lack of production.

The blonde-topped Eagles, 12-7 and currently No. 3 in the South Jersey Group I power points, trailed 4-0 going to the home fifth, but put together enough quality at-bats late in the game to score three in the bottom of the inning to get close and then two more in the sixth to win it.

The three runs they scored in the fifth ended a string of 12 consecutive scoreless innings, a drought exacerbated by an unnerving string of setbacks at the plate, on the bases and in the field that keep a team from being successful.

“We’re just going to the plate and we’re not competing,” Karr said. “I felt like we were on cruise control, just going through the motions, then I catch myself over there counting … 8 … 9 … 10 innings without a run.

“Things were going bad. Everything that could go wrong … I felt like it was one of those days where it was going to go wrong. I told the boys out in the outfield, you guys kind of had to remind me through your play today the things we preach to you – a baseball game is seven innings long, the runs you score in inning one count the same as the runs you score in the seventh.

“We settled in and started grinding out at bats at the plate. The at bats at the end were awesome.”

The Eagles loaded the bases in the sixth on a leadoff walk, misplayed bunt and hit batsman from the bottom of the order. With the Pennsville bench erupting in the Florida State/Atlanta Braves tomahawk chant, Logan Streitz worked a bases-loaded walk to force home the tying run and Peyton O’Brien fought off several payoff pitches before delivering a one-out sacrifice fly to right to put his team ahead. O’Brien also doubled home their first two runs in the fifth.

“I knew I was going to eventually get one to handle,” O’Brien said. “I was saying to myself just don’t strike out because I knew I had to do a job for my team and I did it, so I’m glad.

“Before I went up there (on the double) coach told me just remember you’re one of the best hitters in the state, so I went up with that confidence and got a pitch I could hit, put a good swing on it and got us going.”

Perhaps their biggest play of the game didn’t come at the plate. The Indians were threatening to break it open with two runners in scoring position with two outs in the fifth but Jake Layfield kept Dante D’Ambra’s rocket to short in the infield preventing a second run to score that would’ve made it 5-0.

“When we were down in Ocean City we had a conversation about productive innings at the plate,” Karr said. “On the flip side, you guys hear me all the time saying belly down, keep it in. It’s for that reason right there. He makes an awesome play, keeps the ball in the infield. Doesn’t get an out, but he saved a run and today that’s the difference. The little things.

“When we play these playoff games, you get in the second, third, championship rounds, it’s those little things that are going to be the difference.”

The Indians scored three in the first inning off Luke Wood after he got the first two hitters out, but the Pennsville ace buckled down after that. He allowed only four hits, struck out five and faced only three batters over the minimum over the final six innings.

“I don’t feel like anything really changed (after the first inning), I think I just kept attacking the zone,” Wood said. “You’re going to give up hits, you’re going to give up runs, that’s the game of baseball. I’ve just got to trust that my stuff is going to be better than their lineup over the course of seven innings. You can’t let one inning bother you like that.”

Blonde ambition

Don’t look now but nearly every player on the Pennsville roster sports a dyed blonde head of hair underneath their caps.

It’s a look they’ve sported since their win over Pitman. It grew out of several players – Streitz, Jay Nickles, Mikey McClincy, Aidan Geary, Cohen Petrutz and Stevie Fatcher – sliding down to Streitz’ mom Pam’s Salone Di Bellezza on Broadway for a dye job before joining the team at O’Brien’s house for pizza, and once there convincing the rest to join them.

“It’s been brewing for a few weeks,” Karr said. “Then (Gavin) Spears shows up one day with the blonde hair and I say are you the guy in the group chat that didn’t get the hint it was a joke and they made you do it. He was like, no, no, no, we’re going to do it.”

So far the new look has been met with a curious but favorable response. Streitz reports there have been no negative comments.  “I think everybody likes it,” he said.  The Eagles won their first two games in the new do’s and are now 3-2 with them.

“They want to be like me,” said Wood, who has been regularly dying his hair blonde since his freshman year. “I like not being the only one. You’re looking at our whole group of guys and everyone looks the exact same. My mom tells me all the time she can’t tell anybody apart.”

“It’s growing on me,” O’Brien said. “At first I was a little upset about it, but it’s growing on me. Sometimes I think it looks a little stupid, but we’re a team.”

The only player who hasn’t done it is leftfielder Jeff Wagner and that’s because he has a senior portrait sitting soon.

Karr hasn’t done it, either, but he’s on board and will sit in the chair under one condition.

“I told them if you win a South Jersey championship,” Karr said, “I’ll go to the Salone 10 minutes after the game and do whatever you want.”

The Eagles have a busy week next week. They host current SJ-1 No. 2 Schalick Monday, play a free admission game against Tome School of Maryland in Wilmington’s Frawley Stadium Tuesday night and visit Salem with a chance to clinch their first outright TCC Classic Division title since 2023 Wednesday, the new cutoff date for playoff seedings.

SCHALICK 24, PAULSBORO 1: Luke Pokrovsky hit his fourth homer in four games, Ricky Watt hit a grand slam and four pitchers combined on a two-hitter with 10 strikeouts. Both homers came in a 13-run third inning. Cole Hartley homered in the fifth inning. The Cougars (17-1) have won seven in a row and scored 84 runs in their last five games.

DELRAN 6, WOODSTOWN 4: The Bears broke a 3-3 tie on Jackson Veneziano’s RBI single in the fifth and extended their lead on RBI singles by Jackson Hager and Andrew Reim in the sixth. Woodstown tied the game in the top of the fifth on Rocco String’s RBI double and Dante Holmes’ bases-loaded walk. String had three hits for the Wolverines.