Young Ocean legion team sees summer run end

After breezing through the District 1 tournament with a perfect 3-0 mark, the Oakhurst VFW Post 2228 American Legion baseball team had high hopes entering the state finals.

The Ocean Township-based team realized it had its work cut out for it, as it would have to face the best teams in the state, many of which feature college and recently graduated high school players.

"Watching some of these teams take infield and outfield, you can see they’re better than us, because they’re older than us," said head coach Del Dal Pra, whose team featured just three seniors, and a slew of underclassmen. "But our kids hung tough and played with these guys. I was very proud of them."

The Oakhurst team was challenged from the outset, drawing last year’s state champions from Haddon Heights in the first round on Friday at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood. And they responded admirably, and appeared to be in position to shock the defending champs, leading 6-1 heading into the ninth inning.

Unfortunately, that’s where the wheels came off, as Haddon Heights took advantage of some shaky Oakhurst pitching to mount a seven-run rally and steal the win, 8-6.

"We had them beat, but they hung tough and took advantage of our mistakes," Dal Pra said. "It’s tough to hang with a team like that. Every kid on their team was either a freshman in college last year or just graduated from high school."

And the ramifications of the loss carried over to the next day.

"That loss really broke our backs because we had to come back the next day and play a tough Milltown team at 1 p.m.," the coach said. "That was another team that was loaded with experienced players, but again, we hung with them and had a chance to win."

Once again, Oakhurst managed to build a lead, and entered the fifth inning up 5-4. However, Milltown mounted a three-run rally to take the lead, 7-5, and managed to hold Dal Pra’s squad to just one run the rest of the way, to advance and send the Oakhurst team home.

But there is a silver lining to all of this for Dal Pra.

"I have all these guys back next year except three of them, and we really improved over the course of the summer," he said. "And in the end, that’s the reason why we do this, to get ready for next year’s high school season.

"We’ll still have a few questions to answer, but it was a productive summer."

Make that another productive summer.