South Brunswick U-9 Gold Steadily Improving

In order to concentrate more on development, the South Brunswick U-9 Gold baseball team elected not to play in a league this season.

Fortunately, South Brunswick is starting to see some of the rewards for that decision.

South Brunswick finished the Monroe Memorial Tournament with a record of 1-2. When the South Brunswick Tournament gets started this weekend, the Gold team will be active in four more tournaments.

Yep, that's right. South Brunswick is 2-1 and still active in the East Brunswick Tournament. It is 1-1 and still active in the Montgomery Tournament. It was scheduled to start the Hopewell Tournament on Thursday. Add in the South Brunswick tournament and that is one busy schedule.

"All the local tournaments understand teams may be in multiple events," South Brunswick Manager Hip Crespo said. "They're willing to work with you. Because they want you to come back next year, there is a lot of juggling of the schedule."

Even so, the games eventually have to be played. In addition to a game on Thursday, South Brunswick is scheduled to play two games on both Saturday and Sunday. This will involve travel as well as the games are in different towns and tournaments.

This is one of the reasons why development was so important for this team. When listing the players and positions on the team, the manager called all eleven guys pitchers.

"Last year, we had maybe four or five pitchers," Manager Crespo said. "During the off-season, we worked on developing pitchers. With eleven pitchers, I'm comfortable that we have enough arms to not put any added stress on any one pitcher.

The members of the team are Nick Nosal (pitcher, catcher and outfielder), Brendan Kane (pitcher, catcher, second base, shortstop and outfield), Travis Bush (pitcher, outfield and third base), Nick Campigotto (outfield, pitcher and second base), Matt Harrison (pitcher, outfield and third base), TJ Scarpa (pitcher, catcher, first base and outfield), Anthony Ramos (pitcher, catcher, shortstop and outfield), Reese Jenne (pitcher, outfield, shortstop and third), Eytan Lugassy (outfield, first base and pitcher), Giovanni DeLuca (pitcher, catcher, first base and outfield) and Trevor Crespo (outfield, second base and pitcher).

"It's important to learn as many positions as possible," Manager Crespo said. "When they move up in age, they can figure out what position they are best suited for and where the team needs them."

It's all part of development. South Brunswick put in months of practice and now it's going to take advantage of all that hard work with a lot of games.

"That work has definitely prepared us for this summer," Manager Crespo said.