Photo Credit: Janice Smith
This past weekend marked a first for the Cinnaminson 10U baseball team as the Pirates won the Moorestown Invitational.
“This is the first time we’ve won this tournament,” assistant coach Bob LePage said. “This team’s been pretty successful. We won a Blackwood tournament when we were 7U. When we were 8U we won four tournaments. Last year we came in second in this tournament.”
The tournament was held over the weekend, but the championship game was not played until Monday night.
The team is coached by Ryan Horner (head), Bob LePage (assistant), Paul McDonough (assistant), Mike McDonald (assistant) and Tom Angelone (assistant).
Cinnaminson defeated Delran 15-5 to win the tourney title and return home with the trophy.
“We swung the bats well and jumped on their pitcher early,” LePage said. “Hardly anybody struck out. We hit the ball hard. We hit their best pitcher. We put six on him in the first inning. He’s (Drew Roskos) a really good pitcher.”
Cinnaminson went 2-1 in pool play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Pirates beat Moorestown on Friday, Gibbsboro-Voorhees on Saturday and lost to Delran on Sunday in pool play.
Delran went 3-0 in pool play to advance to the championship game.
“We knew we were going to make the championship round so we did not show anything to Delran in the loss Sunday. We did not steal bases, we didn’t bunt, we weren’t aggressive,” LePage said. “We didn’t show them anything. Because of our two wins in pool play we knew we were into the championship game Monday night, so we laid low during Sunday’s game.”
The Pirates banged out 13 hits in the win and committed just one error.
“It was such a good game for us that I don’t even remember the error,” LePage said. “Our glove work was absolutely fantastic in that game. It makes your pitchers feel better too because they don’t have to worry about being perfect.”
Five players finished with two hits on the day as eight players had at least one hit. Winning pitcher Alex LePage (3 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 3 K) also went 1-for-2 with 5 RBIs at the plate.
LC Smith went the final three innings against Delran to record the save. He allowed just one earned run on two hits.
“One of the biggest things that we did was we played a pretty clean game. We don’t walk people. There’s a big difference from our pitching last year as a 9U team to this year,” LePage said.
“Our team ERA coming into the tournament was around 3.50. That’s good enough to be fifth in the Majors. We have a very good strikeout-to-walk ratio. Our pitching staff keeps us in games.”
Cinnaminson travels this weekend for the Pine Hill Invitational. This is the first year the Pirates will compete in this tournament. Next weekend (6/17, 6/18 & 6/19) the Pirates host the Summer Slam Tournament.
Follow Cinn City Sports on Twitter for news, scores and live updates from games throughout each season. Like Cinn City Sports on Facebook. Sign-up for our daily newsletter, which arrives daily at 8am with the previous day’s stories, on the homepage.
