PURCELLVILLE, VIRGINIA- After finally getting over the Brooklawn Post 72 hump, the Flemington Post 159 baseball team celebrated its second state title Friday night. The Indians, who knocked off Brooklawn 7-1, won their first New Jersey American Legion baseball crown since 2009. But after the festivities ended late Friday night, the players and staff turned their attention to the...
PURCELLVILLE, VIRGINIA- After finally getting over the Brooklawn Post 72 hump, the Flemington Post 159 baseball team celebrated its second state title Friday night.
The Indians, who knocked off Brooklawn 7-1, won their first New Jersey American Legion baseball crown since 2009. But after the festivities ended late Friday night, the players and staff turned their attention to the upcoming Mid-Atlantic Regional tournament, which gets underway Wednesday in Purcellville, and runs through August 7. The tournament, which includes two teams from Virginia, including the host team, and Pennsylvania, and one each from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Flemington plays the Pennsylvania champs, Swoyersville (8-5 winner over Blackhawk), at 12:30.
But this is not a Flemington team that is content with only a NJ title. The Indians have a team loaded with college-aged kids, and a roster full of pitchers, so they will look to do some damage in their first regional appearance since 2012.
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"Absolutely, we feel like we can do something down there," Henry Hawkins said. "Our pitching is on point right now. Everyone feels good. Our lineup can't get any better right now. Everyone hits the ball. We are going in there, and trying to win a world series at this point."
"We can definitely make a run at this," 2016 NJ state tournament MVP Austin Arndt said.
Some of the Flemington roster has already had an even more amazing 2016 baseball season, as members of the NJSIAA New Jersey Group 4 state champions Hunterdon Central in the spring. Two players who started in the legion state final, Mark Saponara and Ryan Koep, celebrated state crowns twice in seven weeks, and are pivotal to the Indians chances this week.
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"We knew we were good coming into this legion season," Saponara said. "We had all the talent. It was just a matter of throwing strikes, and making all the plays n the field. We knew we could do it."
"I could never imagine this," Koep said. "After we won states with Hunterdon Central, I was set on moving on to the summer, and the next season. But i couldn't have imagined this, ever."
"We have a lot of leaders on our team," Koep said. "I think that will help us in the regionals. They keep motivating us to play harder, and we are going to keep at it."
Flemington manager Steve Farsiou, who was at the helm in 2009 (his first season in charge) for the Indians first NJ crown, now gets to take his team into a regional tournament for the third time, and first since 2012 when they were runners-up to Brooklawn.
"New Jersey is very hard to get out of, in baseball," Farsiou said. "Dennis (Barth, the Brooklawn manager) said you have to win the state, because it is so difficult to get out of this tournament. We think that we are one of the best teams in the country. Now we have to go to the regional and stay focused."
"I think we can do some damage there, but we have to stay focused," Farsiou said. "Pitching-wise, and really with my whole team right now, I just feel confident. We have guys that play multiple positions. We have a ton of pitchers. We are able to make a run if we can do it."
"The kids believe in each other right now," Farsiou said. "They know that if they can beat Brooklawn, they can beat anybody."
The tournament will have live box scores and stats from each of the eight regional tournaments here, so you can follow along with the Indians as they try to advance to the American Legion World Series, held August 11-16 in Shelby, North Carolina.
Contact Sean Miller at seanmillertrentontimes@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheProdigalSean