Garnet’s magical postseason run ends at Spring-Ford
ROYERSFORD » A seasonending shutout wasn’t expected, but Garnet Valley players didn’t hang their heads Thursday.
Making it this far — one win shy of clinching a states berth in PIAA’s highest classification —was a special journey, one the Jaguars can remember with immense pride.
The 18th-seeded Jaguars, once a longshot to even qualify for the District 1 Class 6A tournament, met their fate against the topseeded (and heavily favored) Spring-Ford Rams, who earned fifth place in District 1 and are headed to next week’s PIAA tourney via an 8-0 victory Thursday over the Jags.
It wasn’t pretty. The Jags were messy in the field and listless at the plate. They had better days, for sure. But one poor showing certainly won’t define them.
The Jags showed plenty of resolve during the district playoff. Their unlikely run began with a first-round upset of 15th-seeded Central Bucks East, followed by a stunning win over No. 2 Plymouth-Whitemarsh. Garnet Valley fell short against No. 7 Hatboro-Horsham in the quarterfinals, but responded with a 4-3 extra-innings triumph over West Chester Henderson in the first round of playbacks.
It all led to Rams Stadium to face a very talented and senior-laden SpringFord squad determined to avoid being labeled a No. 1 bust that couldn’t even get to states.
On the opposite side were the youthful Jaguars. Jack Dembek, Matt Marowski and Matt Zappala were the only three seniors in veteran coach Rudy Shiller’s starting lineup. There were four juniors and three sophomores.
“We’re an 18th seed and everyone is not expecting us to win. And especially being a team from Delco, you know, coming out here playing the big Suburban One (League) teams,” said Marowski, who pitched 2.1 innings in relief of starter Ryan Wootten. “We just had the mentality that we’re going to win games and we did that.”
With a week to play in the regular season, the Jags suffered a 5-0 defeat to three-win Haverford and were falling fast in the District 1 playoff standings. They had three games left and zero margin for error. GV went on to beat Upper Darby, Ridley and Conestoga to finish 8-8 overall.
“We came off the shutout loss to Haverford and in the next practice we all had a long talk and just decided that we were not satisfied with 5-8,” Marowski said. “We finished those last three games 3-0, got the 18th seed and went on from there.”
“We worked together as a team and did awesome,” Dembek added.
Dembek is off to Indiana in the fall and Marowski will head to Pittsburgh, where he hopes to play club baseball.
Shiller lauded his senior group for finding a way to pull the team together late in the season. After the 5-8 start, the Jags finished with a 12-10 record.
“The thing I’m most proud of is my senior leadership, the way they showed these young guys that, hey, we were down but never out,” he said. “One day after a game, we said to them that we’ve got to win now if we’re going to make the playoffs. At the next practice, the seniors came out and worked their butts off.
And I said right there, that no matter what happens going forward, if you leave it all here and give the effort and work hard, good things are going to happen for us. And it did. We got on a little roll and good things happened for us. You usually can beat a team that’s better than you once or twice and we won four along the line here at the end. It was an amazing run, a lot of fun, and I can’t be more proud of the boys for the way they played.”
Unfortunately for them the Jaguars ran into a buzzsaw Thursday. SpringFord’s big horse, lefty Jackson Malouf, came to dominate. He pitched 6.2 innings of one-hit ball, striking out nine. He finally started to tire in the seventh, walking two, and was removed after
reaching his pitch limit.
Garnet’s only hit off Malouf came in the third inning, a bloop single off the bat of leadoff man CJ Wood.
The Jags tried to scratch out a run in the second when Spring-Ford held a 1-0 lead. Reed Farrell started the inning with a walk and moved to second base on a Dembek sacrifice bunt. Malouf retired Wootten and Logan Nelson back-to-back to get out of the jam.
“He was tough to read,” said Marowski, who went hitless in three at-bats, but reached base safely in the sixth inning on a throwing error. “He had a nice change up and a nice curveball. It was just tough for us to pick up today. He’s a good pitcher.”
Wootten deserved a better outcome. He coaxed
many groundballs, but the Jags were shaky on defense, committing six errors. The junior was removed with two outs in the fourth inning and allowed seven runs (only two earned) on six hits with two strikeouts.
Spring-Ford put the game out of reach when it sent 10 batters to the plate in the fourth inning. Four errors led to four runs on only three hits. The big knock with a two-run single by Ayden McNeely.
“Over these last couple of weeks we’ve really bonded together and we showed a lot of fight. There’s definitely a lot to be happy about,” Marowski said. “I’m happy the way everything happened this year and I know the guys coming back next year will be great.”