Lucky 7: How 7 Wild Days Landed Point Boro Baseball in the State Tournament

POINT PLEASANT – It has been seven days since the Point Pleasant Boro baseball team won the first game in its four-game winning streak and seven different times, it looked like the Panthers’ odds to qualify for the 2025 NJSIAA Tournament would officially hit zero.

But over the course of seven days, everything broke Point Boro’s way: two seventh-inning comebacks; a state-tournament cutoff extension from the state’s governing body; a loss by one of the Panthers’ competitors for the final spot in the section; a second win by a one-win team; a lot of rain; not too much rain; a committed grounds crew; and a willing team from Middlesex County with a coach who happens to live in Point Pleasant.

The Baseball Gods dumped a decade’s worth of good luck in Point Boro’s lap in the past seven days and the Panthers proceeded to make enough of their own to complete an improbable week-long run from a distant 18th place in a hyper-competitive Central Jersey Group II section to the 16th seed in the state’s toughest top-to-bottom section.

“It was like magic happening,” Point Boro coach Dave Drew said. “It was just fun. It was electric. It was everything these kids needed. We’re a young team, we’ve got a lot of these guys coming back next year and a lot of seniors who are in their first year of varsity baseball. We’re just real excited to have an opportunity to be where we’re at. Everyone has been a part of it.”

Although the NJSIAA Tournament brackets are not official until Friday, the power-point calculations are in and the Panthers pulled into the No. 16 spot in Central Jersey Group II, just fractions of a point ahead of both No. 17 Monmouth Regional and No. 18 Wall. Point Boro’s reward for earning the No. 16 seed in Central Jersey Group II is a first-round trip to play top-seed Governor Livingston – a 22-0 team with a lineup loaded with Division I players that has its sights set on the No. 1 ranking in the state to finish the season.

Point Boro’s journey from longshot to qualify to a first-round longshot at Governor Livingston was the perfect confluence of events that are the fabric for special seasons. Beating Governor Livingston and winning a sectional title as a No. 16 seed might seem like a reach, but compared to everything that happened in Point Boro’s favor and everything that Point Boro made happen in its favor, it is not such a pipe dream.

The last seven days have been so improbable, it needs to be documented in full. Here is how Point Boro went “dead in the water” as Drew termed it, to dancing in the rain on Wednesday.

The Section of Death

Before recounting all the steps Point Boro took to rally for the No. 16 seed in Central Jersey Group II, it is important to understand just how hard it was to qualify for a spot in the Central Group II bracket.

Central Jersey Group II is one of 20 sections in the NJSIAA Tournament. There are six difference groups in the NJSIAA Tournament: Groups I, II, III and IV in the public-school tournament and Non-Public A and Non-Public B. Each of the public groups consists of four sections: North Jersey, Section 1; North Jersey, Section 2; Central Jersey and South Jersey. On the non-public side, both A and B have a North Jersey and South Jersey section.

The number of teams eligible for the NJSIAA Tournament in each section varies, but no more than 16 can qualify for the NJSIAA Tournament in a given section. Central Jersey Group II consists of 20 teams, meaning four teams classified as Group II schools in Central Jersey would not qualify for the tournament.

To qualify for the sectional tournament, a team must be in the top 16 within its section according to the state’s power-point formula. Without getting too deep into the weeds, a team’s power-point number is its total number of power points accumulated during its schedule divided by the total number of the team’s games played. In short, it is power-points-per-game average. The official explanation is on page three of the NJSIAA Tournament rules and regulations.

Point Boro earned the No. 16 seed with 18.94 power points – just barely in front of Monmouth at 18.731 and Wall at 18.653 and just behind No. 15 Holmdel at 19.024. To illustrate how strong the Central Group II section is at the bottom of its standings, Jackson Liberty – the No. 19 team in the section – finished well behind Wall for No. 18 with 15.15 power points per game. And yet, that 15.15 number would have landed Jackson Liberty a spot in each of the other 19 sectional tournaments, including better than No. 16 in 15 of the 19.

Furthermore, Monmouth and Wall each would have slotted no worse than No. 12 in any section other than Central Group II. They would have been no worse than No. 11 and as high as No. 8 (South Jersey) in the other three sections in Group II. Monmouth and Wall also would have been no worse than No. 10 and as high as No. 4 (Group I) in the three other Central Jersey sections.

Within the last month, teams like Rumson-Fair Haven and Ocean have been on the outside looking in for a spot in the Central Group II field. Now, Rumson-Fair Haven finds itself at No. 10 and Ocean climbed all the way to No. 4. Not only was the bottom of the bracket strong compared to that of other sections; there was relatively little separating the teams at the bottom from those at the top, save for Governor Livingston – a team in a category of its own in the section.

“That is a victory in itself,” Drew said of qualifying for the Central Group II Playoffs. “Central Jersey Group II is totally loaded. We were absolutely looking at every other section and every other group and we’re saying, ‘Man, if we were here, we’d have a home game. If we were here, we would be the nine seed.’ Anywhere else in the state – any group, any section – we’re in. So to get in the Central Jersey Group II section, it’s a really good feeling.”

To Play in the Rain, It Takes a Village

Point Boro’s improbable run reached its destination Wednesday, when the Panthers beat Carteret, 10-0, in six innings on a home field in Point Pleasant that the school’s maintenance crew whipped into shape in time to host a game during a relatively rain-free window between 4:30 and 6:45 p.m.

“We said it right at the beginning of today’s game: It’s great that we have an opportunity just to play and to have a chance to get in the state tournament,” Drew said. “You have to understand how many people were involved in getting this game in.”

Point Boro’s successfully scrambled to get Carteret to Point Pleasant for an official game on a day in which both Monmouth and Wall had games canceled or postponed because of unplayable field conditions.

The Panthers were originally scheduled to play Carteret on Saturday in Point Pleasant, but moved the game to Wednesday at Carteret once the NJSIAA announced Friday afternoon that the final day to accumulate power points for the state tournament would be pushed back from Saturday, May 17 to Wednesday, May 21.

On Wednesday afternoon, Point Boro’s prospects for playing on Carteret’s turf field seemed promising given a forecast with a low chance of substantial rain from the late afternoon until after 7 p.m. Just before 1 p.m., however, Drew got a text from Carteret coach Dan Morvay with a photo of his flooded field, specifically the pitcher’s mound – the only dirt portion of Carteret’s Sullivan Field.

At that point, Drew sprung into action. First, he checked to see if his own field was anywhere near playable and to his surprise, the feedback he got was that the maintenance crew could get it ready for game time.

“Our athletic director, Bill Fall, and our maintenance people and all that, they all just came together,” Drew said. “They didn’t have to do too much work because the field was in pretty good shape, but those guys came out at one o’clock and got the field ready in about an hour and we were ready to go. A ton of credit to both schools and everyone involved for getting the game in.”

Drew immediately checked back with Morvay and asked if he would be willing to bring his team to Point Pleasant on short notice. It was not a hard sell to Morvay, who is a graduate of Jackson Memorial High School and lives in Point Pleasant, but he warned Drew that securing a bus for his team might be a tall order.

“Coach (Drew) was texting us throughout the day about what was going on and we just kept saying, ‘Great, we want to play. We want to play,’” senior centerfielder James Bradley said. “We did everything we could control to give ourselves a chance. And big thanks to the grounds crew for getting the field ready to play. That was huge.”

While Morvay checked on transportation, Drew sent out an email to coaches from around the Shore Conference and beyond, inviting anyone willing to play at Point Boro on Wednesday afternoon or early evening. According to Drew, he lined up a potential game with Shore Conference Tournament finalist Brick Memorial, with the understanding that the Mustangs would be in as Point Boro’s opponent once Drew got word from Carteret that its team could not get a bus.

As it turned out, Carteret did get a bus and Morvay rallied his players for a last-minute road trip to the Jersey Shore. It was another big break for Point Boro: instead of facing a Brick Memorial team that is one win from winning an SCT title, the Panthers would play a 9-12 team that had already burned its top two pitchers on Monday and Tuesday.

“First off, a ton of credit to Carteret for coming down here and playing in a tough situation,” Drew said. “For them to get on that bus after we were supposed to play up there and come down here and play, you’ve got to give them all the credit in the world.”

Point Boro also had limited pitching options after playing on Monday and Tuesday as well, but still had sophomore left-hander Landon Hoyle ready to go. With a state tournament berth at stake, Hoyle pitched the best game of his young career, firing a six-inning, six-hit shutout with two walks and seven strikeouts. After his victory on Wednesday, Hoyle is now second on the team in innings pitched behind classmate and starting catcher John Loizos.

“He is great,” Bradley said of Hoyle. “He gets us going in the dugout when he is not pitching and when he is on the mound, we love playing behind him. He was the right guy out there today, we knew he would come through.”

Point Boro jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning on a two-run single by junior Matt Lokerson, followed by an RBI single by junior Aidan Dombrowski. The Panthers tacked on a run each in the second and fifth innings before ending the game with five bases-loaded walks in the bottom of the sixth to activate the 10-run rule.

With Monmouth and Wall idle due to the rain, Point Boro passed the two contenders for the No. 16 seed in power-point average by scoring a win over Carteret that was worth more than 30 power points, which pushed Point Boro’s average from the low-18 range to almost just under 19.

Humble Beginnings

The events of Wednesday alone were enough to tell a compelling story, but Point Boro’s stretch run to the state tournament began on Thursday, May 15. Coming off a crushing 10-9 loss to Donovan Catholic three days earlier, Point Boro had to beat Freehold Boro at home to keep its season alive.

“We thought we were out of it,” Bradley said. “This week came around, and we just wanted to play for each other. When the opportunity comes, we’ll be ready to give our all. If our pitching is there, we’re throwing strikes, we’ll go out and make plays, hit the ball and see what we can do.”

The do-or-die game did not start off well for the Panthers and they found themselves trailing, 3-1, heading into the bottom of the seventh inning. With their team down to its final out, senior Hudson Griffin, junior Nick Carmino and sophomore Jake Clayton all delivered season-saving at-bats in the bottom of the seventh. Griffin fell behind, 0-2, and worked his way back in the count before drawing a two-out walk. Carmino then lined a single into right field and Griffin forced an error at third base by going from first to third on the single, allowing him to score and Carmino to move up to second base. Clayton stepped in and tied the game with a single through the left side.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Griffin came through again with a hard ground ball that Freehold Boro could not field cleanly, which scored James Lockwood with the winning run.

The comeback win lifted Point Boro’s spirits, as well as its record to 9-10, but it made only a small dent in the Panthers’ push to catch Wall and Monmouth. To make matters worse, Point Boro already had a game vs. Ocean City canceled due to rain on Wednesday and were looking at another postponement on Friday, with rain threatening a scheduled game vs. Red Bank. With every game crucial to getting back in the race, one more rainout could have been the final nail in Point Boro’s season.

Then, the Panthers got their first major break off the field: the NJSIAA announced it would extend the cutoff to qualify for the state tournament from Saturday to Wednesday, citing a desire to give teams with fewer than 16 games played a chance to complete their schedules. Teams with fewer than 16 games played are at a disadvantage because 16 is the minimum number the state requires to compete in the tournament. Any team with fewer than 16 games would still have their power-point total divided by 16, which could affect their seeding.

The extension also gave teams with 16 or more games already in the bank a chance to improve their power-point status, so Point Boro took advantage by lining up its schedule for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the current week. After Friday’s rain, Point Boro’s scheduled Saturday game vs. Carteret was moved to Wednesday at Carteret, which would follow a Monday game at South Hunterdon and a Tuesday showdown with Holmdel that was on the schedule from the start of the season.

“When (the NJSIAA) moved the cutoff back, we were like, ‘Oh wow. Now we have a couple more days to fight to get in,’” Drew said. “It was great. It was good for everybody here to be a part of that and to play in those games that meant so much to everybody here.”

Panthers Bats Travel

South Hunterdon was the game Point Boro added to its schedule after learning of the new cutoff date and the Panthers agreed to travel to face the Group I school at its home field in Lambertville. The host Eagles started their No. 1 pitcher, Nate Lawton, and Point Boro jumped on him for seven runs in three-plus innings to establish a 7-2 lead through three-and-a-half innings.

Meanwhile, junior right-hander Chase Connelly held South Hunterdon to two runs through the first four innings, so when Point Boro struck for five more runs in the top of the fifth against the Eagles bullpen, the rout was on. Point Boro could not end the game in under seven innings, but finished off a 15-9 win that marked its highest single-game run total of the season. The Panthers also hit two home runs in the game – one by Clayton and the other a pinch-hit shot by senior Zach Johnson.

While Point Boro did its part to stay in the state playoff race, both Monmouth and Wall won tight games on the road – Monmouth at Jackson Liberty, 4-3, and Wall at Hamilton West, 6-3. Monmouth’s win effectively eliminated Jackson Liberty from the playoff picture, leaving Wall, Monmouth and Point Boro to fight for the last spot.

The Day it All Changed

As much as Wednesday’s effort to play and win against Carteret finished off Point Boro’s pursuit of the final playoff spot in Central Jersey Group II, Tuesday was the day that ultimately put the Panthers in the dance. More went right for Point Boro on Tuesday than on any of the other seven days during its season-altering week.

It started with what could go down as the best seventh-inning rally in the Shore Conference this season, made necessary by Holmdel’s offense coming to life in the sixth and seventh innings to turn a 1-1 tie into a 4-1 Hornets lead heading into the bottom of the seventh.

As a team that held a 12-4 record through 16 games, Holmdel carried a major power-point haul with them if Point Boro could find a way to win, but that prospect was bleak with Holmdel leading by three runs and all of its pitching available. Fortunately for the host Panthers, Hornets ace Dylan Zammit reached the single-game limit of 110 pitches with two out in the sixth inning and could not finish the game.

Still, Holmdel had its two best alternatives available and Point Boro worked the first one – Lincoln Maikos – out of the game with a leadoff walk by Lokerson, a one-out single by Dombrowski and a walk to James Lockwood that loaded the bases with one out.

Holmdel then pulled Maikos in favor of Jack Vallillo, who immediately fired a strikeout for the second out. Once again, Point Boro was one out away from its state tournament dream dying.

Bradley, one of three seniors in Point Boro’s starting lineup, then strolled to the plate looking to extend his team’s season and he did even better than that. The left-handed hitting Bradley scalded the ball down the leftfield line for a two-run double and when the throw into the infield got away, a third run scored and Bradley raced into third with the game now tied, 4-4.

Sophomore John Loizos – who pitched the first six innings of the game – fouled off the first three pitches he saw from Vallillo and on the fourth pitch, Vallillo’s offering went to the backstop, allowing Bradley to score the winning run on a wild pitch.

“You’ve got the dugout going, everyone is fired up,” Bradley said of going to bat with the bases loaded and the season on the line. “I’ve got to step up and make a big play. Get something in play and see what we can do. Seeing our guys in the dugout reacting was awesome.”

Point Boro celebrated a 5-4 win over a Holmdel team that resided just a few spots ahead of the Panthers in the Central Group II power-point standings, but that was only one item on the list of outcomes Point Boro needed to happen on Tuesday.

Monmouth and Wall also had games that same day and Monmouth handled its business with a 13-0 win over Long Branch. Both the Monmouth and Point Boro had its eyes fixed on the score coming out of Hamilton, where Steinert hosted Wall in a crucial game in the Central Group II race. Wall entered Tuesday with the No. 16 seed in hand and a win by the Crimson Knights would have effectively clinched the No. 16 seed – assuming Wednesday was indeed a washout as the forecast was suggesting.

Wall fell behind, 4-0, only to storm back with a five-run fourth, followed by a two-run fifth to go up, 7-4. Steinert, however, answered with two in the bottom of the fifth, then scratched two more across in the sixth to jump back in front, 8-7. Wall then went in order in the top of the seventh and the Spartans pulled out an 8-7 that made them new friends in both Point Pleasant and Tinton Falls.

“We won our game, we were checking to see what happened with Wall and we saw they lost,” Bradley said. “We saw our power points jump and then today, we saw that a lot of teams weren’t playing and we were just like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to play.’”

With Wall’s loss, Monmouth jumped into the No. 16 spot and would have effectively clinched the last spot, but there was one more under-the-radar game that gave Point Boro a boost in the race.

An Unlikely Aly

In the current power-point system, wins over teams with especially low win totals are detrimental to a team’s power-point average. For Point Boro, two wins over St. Rose had that impact on Point Boro’s résumé, with the Panthers beating the Purple Roses twice during the Shore Conference Class B South division schedule. Prior to Tuesday, St. Rose was 1-14 with a power-point value of 9.3 for a win – well below the average of 18.731 that Point Boro had to beat to get into the field.

With only 15 games played, however, St. Rose still had one more chance to help out Point Boro and all the other teams that beat the Purple Roses this season. Teams gain residual power points for each win by their opponents, but only through the first 16 games of those opponents. While most teams had already played 16 games and could no longer earn their opponents additional power points for wins after the 16th game, St. Rose still had one more game to play to add to their win total within the first 16 games.

As it happened, St. Rose pulled out a 7-5 win at Red Bank Regional Tuesday to improve to 2-14. More importantly for Point Boro, the Purple Roses increased the value of a win over them from 9.351 to 12.470, a difference of 3.119 power points. With two wins over St. Rose, Point Boro just picked up an additional 6.2 power points on top of the 40.929 points that came with beating Holmdel. The win over St. Rose improved Point Boro’s power-point average to 18.94 when it would have been 18.657 had St. Rose only had one win at the cutoff.

Not only was St. Rose’s second win a late boon for Point Boro, but its first win might have been even more important. The Purple Roses beat Monmouth in the Monmouth County Tournament first round and while Monmouth also gained residual points with St. Rose’s win, it was just a 1.039 difference. Had St. Rose lost to Red Bank, Monmouth would have finished with a power-point average of 18.681, which would have beaten out Point Boro’s 18.657 number by less than a tenth of a point.

In short, without St. Rose’s win over Red Bank on Tuesday, Monmouth would have held on for the last playoff spot in Central Group II and Point Boro and Wall (18.653) would have been separated by 0.004 at Nos. 17 and 18.

“All season long, maybe we had some good luck, maybe we had some bad luck along the way,” Drew said. “We feel like we make our own luck in the end.”

Now, the Hard Part

Now that Point Boro is in as the No. 16 seed – just 0.08 points behind Holmdel for the No. 15 seed – the Panthers are tasked with traveling to play a Governor Livingston team that has yet to lose this season and trails only Don Bosco Prep in power points among all the teams in the state. The Highlanders are also the defending Group II champion and boast four players committed to play Division I baseball, plus a senior Caldwell University commit in Anthony DeNora who leads the team in innings pitch on the mound and home runs (seven) at the plate.

If the Panthers are looking for inspiration, in 2024, Holmdel nearly knocked off Governor Livingston in round one, with the Highlanders surviving, 7-6. Manasquan also upset Governor Livingston in the 2023 first round, so the Highlanders have some recent history with struggling against Shore Conference opponents in the first round.

Even if Governor Livingston is the heavy favorite to advance, Point Boro likes its chances. Considering the probability of Point Boro even being in this position just days ago, anything is possible, as far as Drew and his players are concerned.

“Governor Livingston is a great program, Chris Roof is a great coach and I’m excited to play those guys,” Drew said. “It’s what the state tournament is all about.”