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Hi-Jacked: Vallillo, Holmdel Stun Rumson in 16-vs.-1 NJSIAA Baseball Upset

Matt Manley|May 28, 2026|Last Updated May 28, 2026

RUMSON — The way Holmdel senior Jack Vallillo was feeling about his start on the mound against Rumson-Fair Haven — the No. 1 seed in the NJSIAA Baseball Central Jersey Group II Tournament that began on Wednesday — he knew it was only going to take one run scored by his team to win the game.

Vallillo did not even have to ask his teammates for that run. He went and got it himself and proceeded to shut down one of the Shore Conference’s most dangerous lineups, resulting in a rare kind of state-tournament upset.

Vallillo led off the game with a double, scored the lone run on a wild pitch, then pitched a two-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts to carry 16th-seeded Holmdel to a 1-0 win at Rumson-Fair Haven Wednesday that turns the Central Group II bracket on its head.

‘The worst you can do is lose,” Vallillo said of being the No. 16 seed in the tournament. “You’re already the sixteen seed, so you’re not expected to win. You give it all you got and upsets can happen. We’re 0-0 in the playoffs right now. We can beat anyone.”

In his Wednesday mound masterpiece, Vallillo walked three and complete the game on 106 pitches while improving his season-long record to 4-2. Vallillo also eclipsed the 100-strikeout mark for the season, making him the first Shore Conference pitcher to reach 100 strikeouts since the 2022 season, when four pitchers hit the plateau.

“That’s the most emotion I have had all year,” Vallillo said. “The stands were packed; there were so many people here supporting us and I couldn’t do it without my team. It’s all going our way right now.”

“About halfway through our season, we really started looking to Jack as the guy for us on the mound,” Holmdel coach Chris Arecchi said. “He works fast, he throws a lot of strikes, he gets outs, he throws the ball hard. He eclipsed a hundred strikeouts in today’s game. When you look at all those numbers and you know about the competitor he is, you’ve got to feel good with him on the mound against anyone.”

Rumson sophomore Brady Williams was equally untouchable after the top of the first inning while pitching a three-hitter with seven strikeouts and no walks, but Vallillo’s ground-rule double to rightfield on the first pitch of game put Williams on his heels for just long enough that the Hornets could push across the difference-making run.

“All season, our energy has been down most of the time,” Vallillo said. “We came in hot. We were all hyped up before the game because we knew we had a chance.”

Senior first baseman Rob Mioduszewski lined a 1-2 pitch into rightfield for a single, which put runners on the corners with none out and became bases loaded with none out after Williams hit sophomore shortstop Fred Viole on the first pitch of the plate appearance. Senior Designated hitter Raum Desai chased a 2-0 pitch from Williams, but it skipped to the backstop and allowed Vallillo to sprint home and slide in with the first and only run of the day.

“If you can jump out to a first-inning lead, it means everything,” Arecchi said. “When you’ve got Jack on the mound, you really only need one run. For us to scratch one across in the first inning was huge. Brady Williams pitched a hell of a game, Rumson’s a great team overall, but with Jack on the mound, you always have a chance to win if you can put that run on the board.”

Williams retired Desai on a fly out to left that was too shallow to score the run from third, hit junior catcher Kyle Silberman to re-load the bases, then ended the threat with a strikeout and a fielder’s choice ground out to sophomore shortstop Miles Martin.

“I thought he was good,” Vallillo said of his counterpart. “My teammates had trouble with him. I thought his offspeed was really good. He’s going to be a great player in the future. He’s got a lot of potential.”

Rumson pushed runners to second base in three innings vs. Vallillo but none made it as far as third. Senior third baseman D.J. Ylagan collected both hits against Vallillo and reached second base in the bottom of the first after sophomore first baseman Dan McElduf drew a two-out walk, but Vallillo induced a fly out to senior Massimo Sperduto in rightfield to end the inning.

In the bottom of the fourth, Vallillo recorded the first two outs of the inning on two pitches, including a diving catch by junior centerfielder Ethan Barry to catch a sinking line drive off the bat of McElduf. Junior Aiden Dill then battled back from a 1-2 count to work a seven-pitch walk and scooted to second on a passed ball as Williams battled Vallillo for seven more pitches. This time, the seventh pitch was a swinging strike three to get Vallillo out of the jam.

“Most of my pitches were fastballs,” Vallillo said. “I think I got two outs with my offspeeds. D.J. is a good player and he hit two of my curveballs. I think my fastball is my best pitch so being confident with that was big.”

A six-pitch walk by junior second baseman Lloyd Bush started the bottom of the fifth and Rumson employed the sacrifice bunt with senior centerfielder Jack Gyimesi to move Bush to second base. Bush remained there thanks to a pair of strikeouts by Vallillo to close out five scoreless frames, marking the final time a Rumson baserunner reached second base.

“That fired me up,” Vallillo said. “It’s pretty late in the game and a hit can tie it up there, so getting out of it was huge.”

Ylagan led off the bottom of the second with his second single of the game — another clean shot through the left side on a curveball from Vallillo. Once again, Vallillo shrugged off the baserunner, this time by striking out the Nos. 3, 4 and 5 hitters in the lineup consecutively to send the game to the seventh inning. The second strikeout was particularly noteworthy, as Vallillo broke out a rare changeup to freeze McElduf for strike three after the sophomore went 0-for-1 with a walk and a hard out in his first two at-bats, then fouled off the first three pitches of his sixth-inning plate appearance.

“When you get around three starts into the season, the velocity starts to climb and he just starts to look stronger,” Arecchi said of Vallillo. “He has been that way every year here. I think that’s how he is in a game too. He has gone deep into the game almost every time he starts and he typically finishes strong. He is confident out there, he throws all his pitches for strikes and he does it not only on the mound, but in the field and at the plate as well. We were riding him until 110 (pitches) today no matter what the circumstance was.”

The seventh inning was Vallillo’s lone inning without a strikeout, and it was also his quickest. He needed just eight pitches to retire the side and helped himself out by snaring a hard-hit chopper back at the mound by Bush and flipping it to first base for the second out. Vallillo then induced a first pitch fly out to Barry in centerfield to end the game.

Wednesday’s result marked the second straight game in which Rumson did not score a run after entering the Shore Conference Tournament final Sunday night averaging 7.24 runs per game and leading the Shore Conference with 25 home runs as a team. The Bulldogs lost to Christian Brothers Academy, 12-0, in six innings while committing eight errors and collecting just two hits at the plate. The Bulldogs committed just one error behind Williams on Wednesday, but the bats were stifled by another Division I arm after Penn State commit Dan Pardini beat Rumson on Sunday at ShoreTown Ballpark in Lakewood.

Vallillo’s 12 strikeouts on Wednesday were two short of his season-high of 14, which he has hit three different times this season. His three walks, meanwhile, matched a season-high that he also reached two other times. What made this game unique was it was just the second seven-inning shutout of the season for Vallillo and the first came against a 3-19 Freehold Boro team. This latest one came against the Shore Conference Tournament runner-up and a 20-win team with the second-most power points of any team in Group II.

While Wednesday was officially Vallillo’s first mound outing in a tournament game this season, he had already pitched in a do-or-die game to get Holmdel into the NJSIAA Tournament. The Hornets were seeking an opponent during the final week of the season prior to the NJSIAA Tournament cutoff date on March 16 and got a response from Somerset County Tournament champion Watchung Hills inviting Holmdel to make the trip. Vallillo took the ball and pitched seven innings, allowing one earned run on six hits and two walks while also striking out 12 in a 9-2 win that proved to be the reason Holmdel passed Monmouth Regional to take over the No. 16 seed in the Central Jersey Group II section.

“We had Jack available, so we got on a bus and went up to Watchung and Jack threw very much like he did today,” Arecchi said. “He dominated them and we walked out of there with a nice win. That got us enough power points so that, as long as we took care of business in a couple more games we had left, we were probably going to get in. But that was the one that really got us into the state tournament. We swung the bats well, we pitched well, we played good enough defense to win the game and after that, I think everybody started whispering that we could get into the state tournament. If we could put together a game like that, we could do something if we got in.”

The reason Holmdel had to scramble to qualify for the state tournament is because of its regular season struggles. Despite entering the season with Vallillo and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) commit Dylan Zammit as senior pitchers at the front of the rotation, the Hornets fell out of the Shore Conference Class C North division race and endured a nine-game losing streak that ran from April 21 to a May 8 win over Keyport to finally snap the skid. Coming off a division co-championship in C North a year ago, the regular season was a disappointment that the Hornets had to move past just to extend their season into the NJSIAA Tournament.

“We were all beat down during the nine-game losing streak,” Vallillo said. “The energy was down. We got that one win and we were like, ‘Alright, let’s get the energy up. We still have a chance at states. We still have a few games left to compete our asses off’ and that has carried us all the way until this game.”

Once in, Holmdel had the unique opportunity to throw two Division I arms per week and after Vallillo began the tournament with a bang, Zammit — who was warming up to enter the game had Vallillo reached the single-game pitch limit of 110 pitches — will take the ball Friday on the road against eight-seeded Allentown.

“Our pitching is great,” Vallillo said. “Zammit is going to NJIT, he’s great pitcher and he can shut out anyone. We’re hoping he is confident on the mound on Friday, gets the job done and after that, just work the bats. We’re still a sixteen seed, still nothing to lose, so just go after it.”

 

Box Score

Holmdel 1, Rumson-Fair Haven 0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R H E
Holmdel (10-14) 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 0
Rumson-FH (20-7) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1

Pitching

Holmdel IP H R ER BB SO PC
Jack Vallillo (W, 4-2) 7 2 0 0 3 12 106
Rumson-Fair Haven IP H R ER BB SO PC
Brady Williams (L, 5-3) 7 3 1 1 1 7 86

Top Hitters

Holmdel Game Stats
Jack Vallillo 1-3, 2B, R
Rob Mioduszewski 1-2, BB
Ethan Barry 1-3
Rumson-Fair Haven Game Stats
D.J. Ylagan 2-3

 

 

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