#image_title

Rumson Rout: RFH Baseball Halts Freehold Township Run, Reaches Shore Conference Final

Matt Manley|May 22, 2026|Last Updated May 22, 2026

RUMSON — Most baseball games that feature 17 runs scored on 15 hits and four home runs by one team do not feature a momentum-turning at-bat and when they do, it is almost never a strikeout and it certainly not in the first inning.

On Thursday at Rumson-Fair Haven High School, sophomore right-hander Brady Williams earned one of his easiest wins of the season after digging deep for one of his toughest outs and it resulted in Rumson’s biggest Shore Conference Tournament win in 18 years.

Williams limited first-inning damage by tournament Cinderella and No. 17 seed Freehold Township with three straight strikeouts, then he and the rest of the Bulldogs bats unleashed an onslaught at the plate that buried the Patriots, 17-1, in five innings and sent Rumson to its first Shore Conference Tournament championship game since 2008. The Bulldogs will play the winner of the other semifinal between No. 6 Christian Brothers Academy and No. 15 Colts Neck Saturday at ShoreTown Ballpark in Lakewood.

Williams allowed one earned run in the first inning, which ended with the sophomore striking out three straight batters with the bases loaded. That kicked off a run of 12 straight batters set down by Williams, who then worked around five singles in the top of the fifth inning to complete the shutout. He finished the game with 80 pitches while striking out seven, walking none and hitting a batter.

At the plate, Williams pushed Rumson to the brink of a run-rule win with a bases-clearing double that stretched Rumson’s lead to 11-1 in the bottom of the fourth inning. Meanwhile, four of his teammates — senior third baseman D.J. Ylagan, senior centerfielder Jack Gyimesi, sophomore shortstop Miles Martin and junior rightfielder Casper Billington — blasted home runs, including a grand slam by Billington that capped the scoring.

Freehold Township scored a combined 12 runs in its last two first innings during the Shore Conference Tournament and appeared poised to continue that trend on Thursday. Junior left-fielder George Burdge led off the game by scorching a double to the right-centerfield gap. Fellow junior and centerfielder Nick Stabile legged out an infield single and a wild pitch during the next at-bat scored Burge and moved Stabile up to third base. After junior third baseman Skylar Garcia lined a single to left and Williams hit junior rightfielder Julian Polo, Williams dialed in. He struck out each of the next batters swinging, then won an eight-pitch batter with sophomore shortstop Kobe Dancel by finishing him off with an elevated fastball that Dancel swung through to end the threat.

“That was huge,” Rumson-Fair Haven coach Owen Stewart said of Williams’s first-inning escape. “We have been following Freehold’s run throughout this whole tournament and the thing with them is they just jump all over teams and catch them on their heels. So we really preached that winning the first inning was huge and then when they came out swinging like they did, it got me nervous, but Brady was awesome. Brady is such a great competitor and a lot of that comes from being a football player, being a quarterback and a lot of the innings he has pitched for us where he’ll work into a jam, but he always competes through it.”

Ylagan got that first-inning run back on Rumson’s second batter of the bottom of the inning, crushing a majestic solo home run that comfortably cleared the leftfield fence to tie the game, 1-1. Freehold Township senior left-hander Cameron Chiapuzio won his own prolonged battle with a runner in scoring position by inducing an inning-ending pop-out by senior Aiden Dill on the 11th pitch of the final at-bat of the inning.

“That first inning was huge for us because we have been coming off playing some tense games and we said winning the first inning was going to be the key and it felt like we won the first inning after Brady got out of it and we tie it up with one swing,” Ylagan said. “We saw them in (the regular season) and we knew if we broke the cracks, they would fall back to that team and that’s what we saw today. Nobody can stop us if it’s like that.”

“D.J. is a big energy guy for us, so for him to be the one to hit the home run was big for momentum and to get us right back to a tie game,” Stewart said. “They have been playing ahead for almost the whole tournament, so keeping them from holding the lead after one sniffed that right out and put some pressure on them.”

Rumson took the lead in the bottom of the second, first knocking Chiapuzio out by loaded the bases with none out on three straight singles by Williams, junior second baseman Lloyd Bush and Gyimesi, who bunted his way on. Senior catcher Luke Gallagher greeted Freehold Township sophomore left-hander Ryan Van Kleef with a line drive to leftfield that landed for an RBI single. Van Kleef recorded the first out on a pop-out and induced a sharp ground ball to second base, where Aiden Rivera bobbled the handle before tagging second base for the second out as Bush scored from third. Gyimesi then scored the third run of the inning on a two-out error.

“Offensively, we knew it wasn’t going to be one of those games where we grind it out and try to drive up the starter’s pitch count,” Stewart said. “Our guys went up aggressive, swung at their pitches pitches early in counts and we still able to make them work to get us out.”

In the bottom of the third, Rumson blew the game wide open with four runs, including a pair of home runs. Dill crushed a ground-rule double to left-centerfield and Bush drove him in with an RBI single through the right side to make it 5-1. Gyimesi then crushed a two-run homer that one-hopped the Freehold Township bus beyond the left-centerfield fence.

“When he does things like that, I just think it’s incredible he plays football at all,” said Stewart of Gyimesi, who will play football at Colgate University in the fall. “He is a freak athlete and he is able to put a perfect bunt down in a sacrifice situation and then just sit on a fastball in the middle of the plate and put off the bus in deep left-center here is crazy. What he does defensively, as well, is just as impressive. He runs everything down.”

Two batters later, Martin launched a solo shot to left for an 8-1 Bulldogs lead.

“We have had some troubles with lefties, especially when they are funky and not giving us something that is straight,” Ylagan said. “If they are going to pound the strike zone and throw a loopy curveball, we might take some time to adjust, but disregarding all that today, we just came out and swung it.”

Williams carved through another inning in the top of the fourth and lashed his three-run double to stretch the lead to 11-1 in the bottom of the inning. Gyimesi and Ylagan each reached three RBI for the game with an RBI single apiece and Billington hammered his ninth home run of the season with his grand slam to rightfield. The nine homers tie Billington with Brick Memorial first baseman Dan Golembiewski for the Shore Conference lead in 2026. Billington is also the only player to hit a home run off of Freehold Township ace Jackson Redmond this season, which came in a 5-4 Rumson win over the Patriots on April 6 in Freehold.

“He’s a little bit bigger than last year, but I think a lot of what he is doing just comes from maturity. “He has just become way more confident in himself after the summer he put together and the fall he had for his travel team. Coming back here, this park plays as a hitters’ park, which helps him too, but he puts them out everywhere. There aren’t a lot of ballparks that can hold him.”

With his 80 pitches in five innings, Williams will not be eligible to pitch in Sunday’s championship game, leaving junior Cooper Jones, classmates Hunter Beattie and Brady Dill and senior Max Hinchliffe as the primary candidates to cover the championship innings. Rumson is set to host Holmdel in the opening round of the NJSIAA Group II Playoffs and Stewart does not mind that he now will not be tempted to use an available Williams on Sunday and will instead allow him to prepare for the state tournament opener.

“That Holmdel team can pitch,” Stewart said. “We may have to match zeroes there, so if we didn’t have that to deal with that, taking him out for the fifth might have been a thought. With the guys we have, we’re pretty confident we’ll be fine for Sunday. They have gotten big outs for us all year.”

Regardless of who is on the mound, Rumson will go into Sunday having scored 33 runs in three tournament games and feeling as good about its offense as it has all year.

“We’re all physically talented enough to go out there and put a ball off the scoreboard and make batting practice look pretty,” Ylagan said. “But something we have worked on from day one of the season was having a good approach and stringing together good innings. Stringing together good innings recently has really been the reason for our success.”

 

Box Score

Rumson-Fair Haven 17, Freehold Township 1 (5 Innings)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R H E
Free Twp (13-11) 1 0 0 0 0 X X 1 6 2
Rumson-FH (20-5) 1 3 4 9 X X X 17 15 0

Pitching

Freehold Twp. IP H R ER BB SO PC
Cameron Chiapuzio (L, 3-3) 1 5 4 3 0 0 30
Ryan Van Kleef 1.2 5 4 4 0 0 29
Bradley Santoro 0.1 1 4 3 2 0 20
Brandon Rice 1 4 5 5 3 0 34
Rumson-Fair Haven IP H R ER BB SO PC
Brady Williams (W, 5-2) 5 6 1 1 0 7 80

Top Hitters

Freehold Twp. Game Stats
George Burdge 1-2, 2B, R
Rumson-Fair Haven Game Stats
Jack Gyimesi 3-3, HR, 3 R, 3 RBI, SB
D.J. Ylagan 2-4, HR, 2 R, 3 RBI
Brady Williams 2-3, 2B, BB, 2 R, 3 RBI
Casper Billington 1-4, HR, 2 R, 4 RBI, SB
Miles Martin 2-3, HR, 2 R, RBI
Dan McElduf 1-2, 2B, BB, R
Aiden Dill 1-2, 2B, BB, R
Lloyd Bush 2-3, 2 R, RBI, SB
Luke Gallagher 1-2, RBI

 

Related Articles