Dynasty Mode: Point Beach Wins 4th Sectional Title in 5 Years
POINT PLEASANT BEACH – The feeling for Point Beach in the NJSIAA Group 1 baseball playoffs is simple: If we’re good enough to win the Shore Conference Class A South division title, we’re good enough to win this whole thing.
Hardened by a regular season in which they won the championship against much bigger schools in one of the Shore’s toughest divisions, the Garnet Gulls have stormed through the postseason. They captured their fourth Central Jersey Group 1 title in five seasons on Friday with a 9-1 win over a Shore Regional team that had not given up a single run in the state playoffs until running into Point Beach.
Point Beach celebrates winning the Central Jersey Group 1 Title (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
“It’s 95% preparation, 5% execution,” head coach Angelo Fiore said. “Going through that season that we just went through, that was the preparation. What you just saw today was the execution.”
“I’d say absolutely that’s probably the main reason we won,” senior pitcher/outfielder Tommy Conroy said about playing in Class A South. “Playing better competition, that’s only going to get us better.”
Point Beach has gone from battles against much larger schools to bulldozing the competition when the Garnet Gulls have faced their small-school Group 1 peers in the playoffs.
“Our first three (state playoff) games were a cakewalk,” said senior first baseman Dylan Ryan. “We played 15 innings. We knew Shore was a pretty good team coming into this game, but as our coach says, if we play A South baseball, we’re going to beat anybody. Coming into Group 1, we know we’ve played the best of the best. Brick Memorial, they just won (Central Jersey) Group 3 (on Friday), and we swept them, so we know we can compete with the best.”
The Garnet Gulls (18-6) will now host South Jersey Group 1 champion Woodstown on Monday in the Group 1 semifinals with a trip to Rutgers for the Group 1 final on the line. They have outscored their first four state playoff opponents by a combined 44-4 as they push for their first Group 1 title in program history.
A team that had not experienced much success in its entire history just played in its seventh straight sectional final. The senior class can boast they have won three sectional titles in their four years.
Point Beach’s Tommy Conroy (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
“We’re changing the culture here, game by game, practice by practice,” Conroy said. “I feel like the seniors this year, we set the culture this year, and I feel like that will be going on for years to come.”
Not only that, but the Garnet Gulls have made the successful transition from underdogs to favorites.
“There’s added pressure because now we’re supposed to win, whereas before nobody expected us to win,” Fiore said. “I tried to tell the guys, please savor the moment because it’s so hard to get here, you can’t take it for granted, and let’s make the most of this opportunity.”
Point Beach registered nine hits and took advantage of nine walks by four different pitchers to knock off the Blue Devils (21-9), who were coming off an upset win over perennial power and Point Beach nemesis Middlesex. Conroy went 2-for-5 with a home run and three RBIs, senior catcher Dan Lubach was 2-for-3 with a double and a walk, and third baseman Carson Pfeifer had two hits and a run scored to help lead the way.
Point Beach’s Antonio Acevedo (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
Ryan broke the ice with an RBI single in the second inning before a six-run third inning blew the game open. Shortstop Antonio Acevedo, who reached base four times on a pair of walks and two hit by pitches, drew a walk, went to second on a wild pitch and then scored when Ryan faked a bunt and slapped a one-out single up the middle for a 1-0 lead.
“We have been practicing my slash all season,” Ryan said. “It was 2-0, and I saw a fastball come in. I knew I had to just get it on the ground, and it found a hole.”
Conroy then set the tone for the game’s deciding inning when the lefty smacked the first pitch he saw the opposite way to lead off the bottom of the third. The ball stayed just fair down the left field line and cleared the mesh fence for a solo home run and a 2-0 advantage.
“I got it up in the air good,” Conroy said. “I had a good launch angle on it. I guess the wind helped me out a little bit, a little wind-aided. I knew it was fair, I just barely got it over the fence.”
Two batters later, Lubach launched a shot to center field that he believed was a home run, but as he was rounding third, the home plate umpire ruled it a ground-rule double, saying the ball bounced before the fence, not after it cleared it. It didn’t faze the Garnet Gulls, as bases-loaded walks by designated hitter Thomas Slobiski and Ryan and an infield RBI single by right fielder Davin Marquez pushed the lead to 5-0.
Point Beach’s Danny Lubach (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
“We wanted to see first-pitch fastball and swing, but they kind of caught on to that, so they were throwing us a lot of junk,” Ryan said. “But obviously they couldn’t control it as much as they wanted to, and a lot of walks lead to runs.”
Batting for the second time in the inning, Conroy ripped a two-run single past the second baseman to balloon the advantage to 7-0 and all but put the game away.
“We knew we needed to get one across, and that’s the way our offense has been all year,” Lubach said. “We get one, we get another and another. It’s like a ripple effect.”
Shore scored its lone run off Point Beach starter Bennett Moberg in the fourth inning on an RBI groundout by third baseman Braden Calandriello. The Garnet Gulls tacked on two runs in the fourth inning on an RBI single by Slobiski and a bases-loaded walk by Marquez to make it 9-1.
Moberg cruised through five innings to get the win, allowing one run on three hits, striking out four and walking one before Conroy pitched two scoreless innings of one-hit relief. Point Beach held Shore to four total hits, all of them singles.
Point Beach pitcher Bennett Moberg (Photo: Tom Smith | tspsportsimages.com)
“Bennett is our guy, and we have all the confidence in the world in him,” Lubach said. “His first pitch is sometimes a little shaky, but today he pounded the zone and challenged hitters, and sometimes when you challenge hitters, it goes your way.”
It added up to a dominant march to a sectional title. Point Beach is now aiming to reach its first Group 1 final since 2024, when the Garnet Gulls were ambushed 14-4 by Pompton Lakes as they tried to win their first overall Group title in program history. However, this is a team that has played a much more beefed-up schedule in the rugged Class A South, which includes newly minted Central Jersey Group 3 champion Brick Memorial.
“In (Class) A South, there’s no days off,” Fiore said. “It’s like you’re playing a Top 10 team every day, and for us to emerge out of that as the A South champions, I think Bennett Moberg best said it the other day. He said this is the best prepared that we’ve ever been because that A South was such a gauntlet.”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | R | H | E | |
| Shore (21-9) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Pt Beach (18-6) | 0 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | X | 9 | 9 | 1 |
Pitching
| Shore | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | PC |
| Liam Hennelly (L, 6-4) | 2.2 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 60 |
| Luca Delonardo | 1 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 36 |
| Luce Mocchia | 1.1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 36 |
| Andrew Barham | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 11 |
| Point Beach | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | PC |
| Bennett Moberg (W, 7-2) | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 66 |
| Tommy Conroy | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 33 |
Top Hitters
| Shore | Game Stats |
| Braden Calandriello | 1-2, BB, RBI |
| Riley Smaltini | 2-3 |
| Luca Delonardo | 1-4 |
| Point Beach | Game Stats |
| Tommy Conroy | 2-5, HR, R, 3 RBI |
| Dan Lubach | 2-3, 2B, BB |
| Thomas Slobiski | 1-2, 2 BB, R, 2 RBI |
| Dylan Ryan | 1-2, BB, 2 HBP, R, 2 RBI |
| Davin Marquez | 1-2, 2 BB, 2 RBI |
| Carson Pfeifer | 2-4, R |
| Antonio Acevedo | 2 BB, 2 HBP, 3 R |
