Baseball is Back: Toms River Takes Center Stage Thursday with SJ 3 Final
NJSIAA South Jersey Group III Sectional Championship
Thursday, June 5, 2025
No. 5 Toms River South (18-9) at No. 2 Toms River East (19-6), 7 p.m.
Toms River South at a Glance
Head Coach: Jim Rankin
Last Sectional Title: 2003
Last Sectional Final Appearance: 2003
Road to the Final: Defeated No. 12 Absegami, 1-0; No. 5 Cinnaminson, 2-1; No. 9 Ocean City, 4-3
Projected Lineup (with stats)
Jaden Geremia, Jr., LF (.420, 37 H, 8 2B, 4 3B, 3 HR, 33 R, 19 RBI, 7 SB)
Christian Mascaro, So., SS (.333, 24 H, 5 2B, 20 R, 17 RBI, 9 SB)
Brett Rankin, Jr., 1B (.347, 26 H, 2 2B, 1 HR, 16 R, 15 RBI)
Ben McEwan, Jr., C (.247, 18 H, 6 2B, 2 3B, 1 HR, 14 R, 16 RBI)
Evan Schmidt, Jr., 3B (.244, 19 H, 4 2B, 1 3B, 14 R, 12 RBI, 1 SB)
Ruben Febres, Sr., 2B (.191, 13 H, 3 2B, 14 R, 15 RBI, 3 SB)
Aiden Lynch, Sr., DH (.239, 16 H, 2 2B, 2 R, 11 RBI)
Karsin Migliori, Jr., RF (.220, 9 H, 5 R, 4 RBI, 2 SB)
Canaan Sanzone, Jr., CF (.310, 18 H, 2 2B, 1 HR, 13 R, 12 RBI, 1 SB)
Projected Starting Pitcher
Aiden Moylan, So., LHP (6-1, 2.77 ERA, 43 IP, 32 H, 21 BB, 51 SO) – 110 pitches available
Available Relief Pitchers
Christian Mascaro, So., RHP (1-2, 4.03 ERA, 19.1 IP, 17 H, 11 BB, 15 SO) – 110 pitches available
Ruben Febres, Sr., RHP (1-1, 1.80 ERA, 12.2 IP, 15 H, 7 BB, 14 SO) – 110 pitches available
Evan Schmidt, Jr., RHP (2-2, 2.67 ERA, 26.2 IP, 28 H, 4 BB, 21 SO) – 110 pitches available
Ineligible Pitchers
Aiden Lynch, Sr., RHP
Toms River East at a Glance
Head Coach: Keith Smicklo
Last Sectional Title: 2006 (South Group IV)
Last Sectional Final Appearance: 2006
Road to the Final: Defeated No. 15 Timber Creek, 16-0; No. 7 Hammonton, 9-0, No. 6 Shawnee, 2-0
Projected Lineup (with stats)
Joey DiMeo, So., 3B (.397, 29 H, 8 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 35 R, 17 RBI, 40 SB)
Gavin Toth, Sr., C (.338, 25 H, 4 2B, 14 R, 20 RBI, 13 SB)
Matt Ferrara, Sr., SS (.418, 33 H, 13 2B, 2 HR, 33 R, 21 RBI, 26 SB)
Dan Nafziger, Sr., P (.319, 22 H, 2 2B, 12 R, 18 RBI, 4 SB)
Mike Vaccarino, Sr., 2B (.329, 24 H, 7 2B, 2 HR, 21 R, 16 RBI, 9 SB)
Carson Frazier, Fr., CF (.273, 21 H, 5 2B, 10 R, 17 RBI, 1 SB)
Lucas Melton, Jr., RF (.291, 16 H, 1 3B, 2 HR, 15 R, 15 RBI, 15 SB)
Jax Buatez, Jr., 1B (.213, 13 H, 2 2B, 11 R, 10 RBI, 3 SB)
Chase Caswell, Jr., LF (.353, 6 H, 1 2B, 5 R, 7 RBI, 1 SB)
Projected Starting Pitcher
Dan Nafziger, Sr., RHP (8-0, 1.65 ERA, 51 IP, 46 H, 10 BB, 63 SO) – 110 pitches available
Available Relief Pitchers
Jonathan Pallman, Jr., LHP (0-1, 2 saves, 1.53 ERA, 18.1 IP, 17 H, 2 BB, 21 SO) – 110 pitches available
Liam Scallon, Sr., RHP (2-0, 4.61 ERA, 27.1 IP, 30 H, 16 BB, 23 SO) – 110 pitches available
Joey DiMeo, So., RHP (0-2, 1 save, 5.73 ERA, 3.2 IP, 3 H, 4 BB, 5 SO) – 110 pitches available
Ineligible Pitchers
Mason Pentz, Sr., RHP
First-year Toms River South coach Jim Rankin caught himself calling back to his days playing for the team he know coaches, specifically a game at what is now known as Bill Frank Field on the campus of Toms River East High School.
It was 1996 and Rankin was a senior on an Indians team taking on Middletown South in the Shore Conference Tournament championship game at Raider Ravine.
“I can still remember taking a second while that game was going on to look up on the hill and see the huge crowd,” Rankin said. “It’s the kind of atmosphere you dream of playing in and just that memory of looking up and seeing all those people has stuck with me all these years. It’s an unbelievable experience.”
Nearly 30 years later, Rankin is taking the current iteration of Toms River South into the same setting Thursday night, only this time, it is not a neutral site against a team from Monmouth County in the Shore Conference Tournament final.
On Thursday night at Raider Ravine, Toms River East will host Toms River South with the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III championship on the line in what is a long-awaited return to a championship game for two proud programs with a long list of ties that bind one another together as much as there are clashing interests typical of rival schools.
“Since we beat Clearview (in the sectional quarterfinals) and East took care of that end, the narrative was obviously there,” Rankin said. “You can understand why people in town are excited, but from my standpoint as a coach, it’s been my job to make sure the kids are focused on the task at hand. There’s no doubt they are excited to play East – these guys all know each other and there are definitely bragging rights that come with playing your crosstown rival. At the end of the day, though, we would have been excited to play anybody in a sectional final. If Shawnee beat East on Tuesday, we would be hosting, so I think either team winning would have had the kids fired up.”
Once coached by brothers Ken Frank (Toms River South) and Bill Frank (Toms River East) – Ken Frank for a 46-season run that ended last spring and Bill Frank from 1984 to 2013 – the two programs are now run by former players who not only grew up playing during the same time period, but were friends during childhood.
Rankin and Raiders coach Keith Smicklo were such good friends, in fact, that Rankin brought Smicklo on staff when he was hired as the head coach for Jackson Liberty when the school first opened. Smicklo was Rankin’s right-hand man in the dugout until the opportunity to coach his alma mater presented itself in 2017.
“Jimmy and I have been friends long before we were coaching,” said Smicklo, who graduated from Toms River East in 1999 – three years after Rankin graduated from South. “He knows me, I know him, we pull for each other and now, we’ll be coaching against each other. Whatever happens, we’ll congratulate one another and I’m sure we’ll share a laugh about it down the road. But other than that, I don’t think our history will have much impact on the game. It comes down to who catches the ball, who makes the throws, who executes. It’s the same thing that got both teams here.”
With Rankin at the helm, Jackson Liberty reached four sectional semifinal games and each time, the Lions lost. So, when Rankin and Toms River South beat Ocean City, 4-3, on Tuesday, it was not just Toms River South’s first sectional semifinal win in 22 years; it was Rankin’s first semifinal win as a head coach after four close calls.
“Growing up in Toms River, playing at South when I did, you definitely start thinking that winning championships is just part of it,” Rankin said. “Then, when you become a coach, especially starting from the ground floor at a place like Liberty, you gain an appreciation just how hard it is to win games, let along championships. You have to get your guys to buy into the vision, to believe they’re good enough to do it and even then, you need some things to go your way.”
Unlike Rankin, Smicklo has a much harder time pinpointing a singular game at Toms River East that stands out because he played so many big games there before graduating in 1999. The last week-and-a-half has not quite been the whirlwind for Smicklo that it has been for Rankin, but it is a major milestone for him and the Raiders team that he has coached for eight seasons. Toms River East has not played in a sectional final since winning the 2006 South Jersey Group IV championship – the Raiders’ fourth sectional championship under Bill Frank and third in a span of six seasons.
The Frazier Connection
You didn’t think we could preview a championship game in Toms River without bringing up the Fraziers, did you?
The three Frazier Brothers – Charlie, Jeff and Todd – were instrumental in making Toms River South one of the state’s most dominant outfits in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. All three brothers were drafted, with both Jeff and Todd making a stop at Rutgers prior to making it to the Major Leagues.
While Jeff and Todd made it to the Show – Todd for an 11-year Major-League career – Charlie was the trailblazing older brother who was drafted and signed by the Florida Marlins after his senior year in 1999.
Now, Charlie’s son, Carson, is the trailblazer for the next generation of Fraziers, with just one noteworthy exception: he is playing for Toms River East.
Carson Frazier is a freshman starting centerfielder on the Raiders and has come up with several big hits for his team throughout the season. His father and uncles will undoubtedly be rooting for another big moment for the rookie centerfielder, but the entire experience is sure to be a surreal one for the family that is steeped in Toms River South tradition.
Toms River East also has two assistants on its staff – Bill Beining and Steve Petrosino – who played at Toms River South, so there will be plenty of ties between the two schools on the field and in the crowd.
Long Climb Toward the Top
Of the two teams playing on Thursday in Toms River, East is the team that was both expecting and expected to be playing for a championship this season. The Raiders returned three All-Shore players to the roster in shortstop Matt Ferrara – a University of Pittsburgh commit – catcher Gavin Toth and sophomore third baseman Joey DiMeo from a team that won the Ocean County Tournament in 2024.
This year, Toms River East won the OCT again and earned the No. 2 seed in both the Shore Conference Tournament and the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III section.
Before last season, the Raiders’ best postseason accomplishments were back-to-back trips to the OCT semifinals in 2018 and 2019 – including a loss to Toms River North in the 2018 championship – and a trip to the 2019 South Jersey Group III semifinals. That run to the sectional semifinals ended with nine-inning, 6-5 road loss to Triton and the Raiders would not win another state tournament game until this season’s first-round win over Timber Creek.
In Smicklo’s first season, the Raiders went 3-17 while he tried to overhaul a program that had plenty of tradition but needed an upgrade.
“We’ve kept a lot of the traditions and a lot of the same ways we used to do things under coach (Bill) Frank,” said Smicklo, who played and coached at Rowan University after high school before joining Rankin at Jackson Liberty. “I learned a lot from coach Frank and I also learned a lot from coach John Cole at Rowan and a lot of what we do now comes from things I picked up learning while playing for him and coaching with him, plus all the different coaching clinics I’ve been to. It’s a lot of the old-school mentality that has also been part of the tradition at East – play hard, get dirty – with some more of the new-school stuff that we have brought to the program.”
This season, Toms River East has looked the part of sectional favorite. They have outscored their three opponents by a cumulative score of 27-0, with senior starting pitchers Dan Nafziger and Mason Pentz combining for 16 of the 17 shutout innings.
“I can’t say enough about the job Danny and Mason have done. They were both big for us as juniors and they came back motivated to be even better this year and it’s been great to see them pitch as well as they have as seniors. Both of those guys are big-game pitchers who want the ball every game.”
One-Year Turnaround
Despite his success in quickly building Jackson Liberty into a competitive program in Ocean County, Rankin figured to have a multi-year project on his hands in turning around Toms River South. The Indians were coming off their worst season by record since Ken Frank took over as head coach in 1977 – a 5-18 campaign that still included a run to the Ocean County Tournament semifinals that ended with a loss to Toms River East in a 3-2 game.
On top of the 18-loss season, Toms River South had not won a state tournament game since 2017 and had not won a Shore Conference Tournament game since 2018.
Now, more than two months into Rankin’s first year as head coach, Toms River South is 18-9 with a second-place finish in the Class C South division of the Shore Conference. The Indians snapped their droughts in both the SCT and NJSIAA Tournament, beating Howell in the first round of the SCT and opening this current state-tournament run with a win over No. 12 Absegami.
“I know there are some people who maybe though they would struggle coming off last year, but it hasn’t surprised me at all,” Smicklo said of Toms River South’s turn-around under Rankin. “Jimmy is a great coach. His teams are fundamentally sound. He does a great job of getting his message across to the kids and getting them to buy-in and believe in what they are doing. In high school sports, that’s half the battle.”
While Toms River East has dominated the opposition in this tournament, Toms River South has operated with little margin for error and survived each time. All three of the Indians’ wins are by one run and yet, Toms River South has yet to trail during the NJSIAA Tournament.
“At this point in the season, we have seen a lot,” Rankin said. “I feel like we’ve been able to win in a variety of ways. We have come back to win, we have jumped on teams, we’ve been in those back-and-forth battles. I don’t think there are many scenarios that will be too much for our guys to handle.”
Like Toms River East, South’s success has come on the arms of two pitchers – senior right-hander Aiden Lynch and sophomore left-hander Aiden Moylan. The two pitchers combined to finish off Ocean City, 4-3, on Tuesday, with Moylan keeping his pitch count to 40, allowing him to throw the full 110 pitches on Thursday.
The Match-Up
Last year’s 3-2 Toms River East win in the OCT semifinals was the third of three competitive games between the two teams during the season – all won by Toms River East. This year, with Toms River East in Class A South and Toms River South in Class C South, the teams met just once. It again was down to the wire, with Toms River East scoring four runs in the bottom of the seventh to walk off with an 8-7 win.
That game was not especially meaningful beyond the usual bragging rights that come with an all-Toms River match-up. It came after the NJSIAA Tournament cutoff as a state-tournament tune-up game for both teams, which meant both Lynch and Moylan pitched in the game for Toms River South, while Pentz worked an inning for Toms River East. Nafziger, however, did not pitch and with the senior taking the ball Thursday and looking to go 9-0, his presence will dramatically change the complexion of the championship game.
“Our kids have been very receptive to our game plan and against Ocean City, we really committed to working the count and getting traffic against (Alabama commit) Evan Taylor, because we felt like when he was in the stretch, he wasn’t as effective. Against Nafziger, you can’t count on him to give you anything. He is in the zone as much as any pitcher you’re going to see at the high-school level, so you’re just going to have to battle and look for him to leave something over the plate.”
Prediction
As fond a memory as his experience on the field at the 1996 SCT championship game was, Rankin and his Toms River South team lost an eight-inning classic to Middletown South, 4-3. He would like for his new players to walk off the field Thursday with a different outcome, which would complete a first year for Rankin and the program that would be nothing short of magical.
Toms River South’s baseball tradition includes 10 NJSIAA sectional championships with five overall Group III championships, which are commemorated by the “balls on the wall” at Ken Frank Stadium across town from where the Indians will meet Toms River East on Thursday. Those balls on the wall have long since begun to look dated and Rankin’s team would like to add to the collection by bringing the trophy home from Raider Ravine on Thursday night.
Toms River East, meanwhile, has the same aspiration. The Raiders have tasted championship victory in the OCT and are now one win over a team they have beaten four times in the last two seasons from winning an elusive South Group III title and moving one step closer to the program’s first overall state title since 2001.
With Nafziger on the mound, Toms River East has a built-in edge as the senior has been one of the Shore’s top pitchers this season. The Raiders also have a hyper-aggressive base-running team that will be facing a Toms River South team that has cycled through catchers this season, with junior Ben McEwan bringing stability to the position for the stretch run. Moylan will have to limit the baserunners to take the pressure off himself and McEwan when it comes to controlling the running game. With runs likely at a premium against Nafziger, Toms River South cannot afford to let Toms River East wreck the game on the base paths.
There is one more x-factor to watch for both teams: the leadoff hitters. Toms River East’s Joey DiMeo has been locked in during the tournament schedule and can impact the game with his bat and his legs. The same goes for Toms River South leftfielder Jaden Geremia, who has clubbed three home runs during a breakout junior season.
Whatever the result of the game, Thursday night will be a victory for baseball in Toms River. Not since Toms River North won the South Jersey Group IV title has a team from Toms River won a sectional title. Since then, three legendary coaches – Ted Schelmay from Toms River North – have retired, the NJSIAA Group Championships have moved out of Toms River As the quality of the fields has fallen off, and the teams that call them home have endured their worst seasons in recent memory.
Thursday is a rekindling of the fire that made Toms River not just one of the great baseball towns in all of New Jersey but in all of the U.S. One team will end a three-decade championship drought, but two teams are set to bring back high-level baseball in one sure-to-be-unforgettable night.
“I’m excited for our kids, I’m excited for the school and most of all, I’m excited for Toms River,” Smicklo said. “It’s going to be a great night.
“I told our guys: ‘Just remember to take a moment to look up at that crowd on the hill,’” Rankin said. “Look at the bleachers, look at as many faces as you can and appreciate what it is you have generated here. People are taking notice of what you’re doing. Remember to enjoy the chase.’”
The Pick: Toms River East, 5-2
