By Rich Bevensee
The Technique Tigers Baseball Academy 14U squad had been waiting a long time for this moment, and the postgame celebration was evident of that.
The group hug down the third base line had the look and the feel of something special, as though the weight of wanting to win was finally lifted off the players’ shoulders.
After Jackson Hyner sparked the offense with an RBI double and Easton Nankervis pitched his way out of a bases-loaded jam, the Tigers broke through for their first title of the spring/summer with a 5-2 victory over Diamond Jacks Gold in the 14U Blue bracket final of the Beat The Heat tournament on Sunday at Diamond Nation in Flemington.
“We are family,” Nankervis said. “We’ve been playing together since we were 10 or 11 years old. We all love each other. We’ve been practicing since December, working for this moment right here. Hopefully we can come back and do it again.”
“They put a lot of pressure on themselves,” Tigers coach Ramon Sanchez said, “because our 18-year olds and 16-year olds have won two tournaments already. They’re trying to show the older kids, we’re just as good as you are.”
The Tigers, who hail from Trumbull, Connecticut, earned a bye into the final after going 2-0-1 in pool play. They beat Baseball U PA National, 6-3, and Complete Performance Baseball Academy, 10-2, and they tied Iron Nine Baseball North, 1-1.
The Diamond Jacks defeated Centercourt Baseball Clemente, 6-3, and the CK Cardinals, 6-3, and lost to Baseball U, 9-6. The Diamond Jacks advanced to the final by thumping U.S. 9 Prospects, 11-1, in the semifinals.
The Tigers’ Hyner and Graham Gabriel were named co-Most Valuable Players of the tournament.
“Graham’s been consistently hitting the whole year. He’s been phenomenal and Jackson picks up the team verbally,” Sanchez said.
The Tigers never trailed in the final after Hyner’s opposite-field, RBI double in the left field corner in the bottom of the first inning.
Hyner was also in on the key moment of the game, when Sanchez made a mound visit to check on Nankervis, who was tip-toeing through a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the top of the fourth.
The Diamond Jacks had just scored their first run when Derek Guzman scored on an infield error, and Nankervis gave up a walk to load the bases.
“The energy was shifting towards them (the Diamond Jacks) and we needed to start making plays,” Sanchez said. “We had one out but we weren’t really talking. I said, ‘Listen, man, the momentum’s shifting, we gotta switch it back to us, we gotta start picking up our pitcher.’ They knew it but they had to hear it.”
The entire infield met on the mound for that visit, but Nankervis said it was Hyner they listened to after Sanchez walked back to the dugout.
“They were really taking advantage of momentum, really getting loud,” Nankervis said, “and at the time we felt like we were losing some of that momentum. But we gathered ourselves. I give a lot of credit to Jackson, he brought us back and kept us in it.”
“I tried to lead by example this weekend, but it was really a team effort,” said Hyner, a rising sophomore at Shelton High. “Winning this means so much to us. We all wanted it and it showed because everyone contributed.”
Nankervis, a rising sophomore at Trumbull High, responded to the pep talk by inducing an infield popup and a weak groundout to escape the inning.
Tigers’ Jackson Hyner and Graham Gabriel were named co-MVPs of the 14U Beat The Heat.
“That felt pretty great to walk off the mound,” Nankervis said. “At that time I was getting tired but I was glad I could get those last couple outs.”
The Diamond Jacks made it a one-run game in the top of the fifth when Jameson Bower tripled into the right field corner and scored on a wild pitch.
The Tigers responded with three unanswered runs to ice the game. In the bottom of the fifth, Eric Falcon walked and eventually scored on a wild pitch, and Izaiah Scalzo added an RBI infield single. Jayden Richardson scored on a wild pitch in the sixth to cap the scoring.
Nankervis went 4⅓ innings and allowed two runs on six hits and two walks and struck out five. Gabriel pitched 1⅔ scoreless innings in relief, walking one and striking out three.
Alex Perrotta accounted for two runs in the Tigers’ half of the third inning when he singled up the middle to score Falcon, and later scored on a wild pitch for a 3-0 Tigers lead.
Michael Murphy pitched two innings for the Diamond Jacks and allowed three runs on four hits, walked four and struck out two. Alex Dyer entered in the third inning and struck out the side to strand Tigers runners on first and third. Dyer surrendered three runs over four innings on one hit and four walks.
T.J. Dally, who moved from second to third when Dyer relieved Murphy, made the defensive play of the game in the bottom of the fourth.
With two out, the Tigers’ Sebastian Ross hit a hard chopper down the third base line. Dally’s momentum carried him into foul territory as he backhanded it, and, without taking a step, he fired a bullet to first to nab Ross.