Baseball Team Faces Lakeland in State Semifinal Today

It was a another dramatic ending for the boys' varsity baseball team this past Friday, coming from behind to defeat highly-touted Morristown 9-8 to capture the state sectional championship.

Now, the county and sectional champs are gearing up for their North Jersey state semifinal matchup against Lakeland, who as the 11^th seed went on to win their sectional crown after defeating the Bergen County champion for the honor.

The game will take place today at Kean University at 4 p.m.

The Cougars are just one of 24 teams still standing after the long spring season, but they're not quite ready to end their dream run just yet.

"We'll just take it one step at a time," said junior Eric Walano. "Next up is the North Jersey championship and we're ready and pumped for that."

Walano scored the game-winning run Friday after a misplay by the Colonials' shortstop allowed the ball to go into left field. Walano's head-first slide allowed him to just get his fingertips on the corner of the plate barely ahead of the tag, and that was all they needed to start the celebration in front of several hundred cheering Cranford fans at Memorial Field.

"It was just fantastic," said Walano. "Rob Ghiretti got a good piece of the ball and it managed to find a way through. My coach was just sending me in. There was no way I was getting tagged out at home this late in the game."

"Give credit to Morristown, they're an outstanding team," said head coach Dennis McCaffery. "It took everything we had to even be able to stay with them. We were fortunate to be able to pull it out at the end."

The Cougars, who improved to 24-5 on the season, took an early 3-0 lead, but were forced to come back after falling behind 7-4. And just like it was against Westfield and Scotch Plains recently, the comeback kids never doubted their ability to win the game.

It's a credit to their work ethic," said McCaffery. "I've said all along, this is as hard of a working team as we've had in this program and good things happen when you work hard. These are the kids that go hit in the morning before school every day, and we always tell them, hard work will always bring good results."

"We came from behind, we had an early lead, but we lost it," said pitcher Nick Cook. "We just stayed together, got some key hits in key spots and got some runs back. Pitching held them down. I felt great. I havne't thrown in a while, but my arm felt great out there. I was throwing strikes, my changeup was my out pitch, and I felt really good throwing it."

"We don't panic when we're down, we just keep chipping away until we get the runs back," said Greg Matlosz. "And that's what we did. It took extra innings, but we did it."

Freshman Sean Feeney and Walano both connected on three hits to pace the Cougars' 12-hit attack against Morristown.

"We definitely never give up, never put our heads down, and it's something we stress on the whole season," said junior Mark Osofsky. "All of our big games have come like this and it just proves you have to win the whole fight and not put your head down when you're losing."

McCaffery, who has guided Cranford to six UCT crowns in 12 years, is enjoying the programs' seventh sectional title.

"They're all good and this is a very special one as the other championships that we've been fortunate enough to win here. We're going to enjoy this one."

"I'm happy moving on to the next round," said Cook. "I love to play baseball and practice every day. I hope we win some more games."