The baseball team's impressive 2011 campaign ended on Tuesday with a 15-5 loss at Hackettstown in the North 2, Group 2 semifinals of the NJSIAA state baseball tournament.
Trouble started early for fourth-seeded Madison, as Hackettstown (20-1) shelled starting pitcher Connor Higgins for 11 runs in the game's first two innings.
“It was exactly what we didn’t want to happen,” Madison head coach Mickey Ennis said. “Connor left a couple of pitches up and he just had a little trouble with location out there."
“With the one seed in the state, you can’t go into the second inning trailing 7-0,” Madison senior shortstop Jake Meister said. “[Hackettstown] set the bar very high. We weren’t going to give up, but you can’t go into a game like that, with a team that good.”
Find out what's happening in Madisonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Higgins only lasted three innings, allowing 11 runs on 14 hits, including two home runs.
While the Madison bats took some time to get going, the Dodgers did find a way to get to Hackettstown starter Justin Knight, scoring five runs in a two-out rally in the fourth inning on RBI singles by Connor Allen and Nick Lucas, and a two-run single by Dilan Kluge.
Find out what's happening in Madisonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
“I’ve known all along that this team isn’t going to give up," Ennis said. “We were looking for something just to crack it open a little bit with the hopes that we might be able to put together another run. We’ve had four-, five-, six-run innings all year long and I really didn’t think that we were out of this game until the last out was made.”
With the Dodgers putting together an offensive attack, Ennis pulled Higgins in favor of senior Mike Haughey, who held the intimidating Tiger offense to four runs. But the damage had already been done, and Madison was unable to rally.
“I take a lot of great things from this season,” Haughey said. “I think we’ll forget about some of the games, some of that stuff isn’t as important as hanging out with these guys and making a lot of new friends. We did a lot of great things on the field, got a lot of wins, played some very competitive ball, but I’m definitely going to miss these guys more than I’m going to miss anything about baseball.”
Ennis and his group can look back on 2011 as one of Madison's most successful seasons on the diamond.
“This team to date is [one of] the most successful teams in the history of our school,” Ennis said. “And for years to come they have now not raised the bar, but set the bar very high for future Madison baseball teams.”
And while many of the Dodgers and their fans will take time to reminisce on this season, Ennis is already looking forward to 2012.
“We have a couple of pretty good pitchers coming back,” he said, “which is where it starts. The starting catcher [Nick Lucas], who started the last three games for us comes back; our No. 3 hitter [Cameron] Dias comes back.
"It’s a pretty good nucleus. We’re certainly going to have to fill some big holes that these seniors are going to leave us, but that’s what programs are all about. So we’ll have to work in the winter, I’m sure they’ll work hard, and we’ll put out a very competitive team out next year.”
