Delran had very high expectations for this season

Those who’ve played baseball at Delran High have come to expect winning.

That is what has been ingrained in them — from former head coach Rich Bender, South Jersey’s all-time winningest with 672 wins in 43 years at the helm, to current head coach Jim Goodwin, who entered his second season this year.

After an 18-5 inaugural campaign, Goodwin and his charges were expecting similar success in 2020 with a dozen players back.

What no one could have expected was a spring without baseball, or any sports, because of the coronavirus pandemic. That’s nearly blasphemy in Delran, yet that is what student-athletes around the Mid-Atlantic region have been dealing with this season.

“I had really high expectations for this team. We returned almost the entire team from last year,” said Goodwin, who was being assisted by Jesse Zwier, Brian Jenkins, John Dockins and Jon Repece. “With (R.J.) Moten and (junior right-hander Kris) Giangreco on the mound, we were going to be very tough come state tournament time. Offensively, besides those two, we returned (junior) Tyler LeRoy, who hit third for us all last season. We had upgraded our schedule this year, which I felt was really going to help prepare us for the state tournament.”

Prepared for success was the best way to describe the Bears. And, with a player the caliber of Moten at the top of their lineup, they had good reason to be.

This speedy senior center fielder and right-handed pitcher is a twosport dynamo headed in the near future to the University of Michigan,

where he intends to play football and baseball while majoring in criminal justice.

Lofty goals, yes, but hey, he’s from Delran!

“I’ll miss most being able to do it one more time with my team,” said Moten, who was named as a Rawlings-Perfect Game High Honorable Mention All-American in the preseason. “Every time I played in high school, I thought we had a chance to win. This was looking like the year for us to do great things.”

Moten is one of six seniors, including five returnees, who were going to help the Bears chase another Burlington County Scholastic League division title and perhaps a sectional or state crown along the way.

He, second baseman Luke Arcaini and catcher Ryan Howlett were captains. Utilityman Devon Hess, plus outfielders Paul Ginty and Ethan Wilson rounded out that talented senior class which will never get to see how good it could have helped Delran become.

“I feel like the general answer is I’ll miss most just playing. But, for me, I’ll miss everything else we did together,” said Arcaini, another multitalented student-athlete who works in the school’s theater and music departments when not on the ball field. “We had these team dinners that were a lot of fun. We’d go to Mike’s Pizza after every win. It’s the whole experience that I’m going to miss, along with knowing that I was definitely going to play.”

With the spring season lost and many chances for summer ball either canceled or up in the air because of continued COVID-19 concerns, it may be a while before any of these young men get to return to a field again, although Gov. Phil Murphy announced Friday that organized sports can begin practicing, under health department guidelines, beginning June 22.

“People have talked about maybe playing later in the summer or even just getting together once things start to clear up, but there’s nothing really definite,” RCBC-bound Arcaini said of his summer plans. “Everything’s just put on hold right now. It’s crazy!”

For Moten and Howlett, another multi-sport star who was the goalkeeper for the Bears’ 17-5-2 boys soccer team when they brought home the school’s fifth consecutive sectional title in the fall of 2019, the pandemic’s long-lasting effects could interfere with their other sports.

The hope is that most of those problems will be cleared up, or, at least, allowed with restrictions, once everyone returns to school for the 2020-21 academic year.

But a fall without soccer or football in Delran? That would be more blasphemy for a town which has already missed out on one of its favorite sports this year.