A Big Week Ahead For Marple Newtown's Baseball Team

The 6-0 start is nothing really surprising. Especially not for , the defending Central League champion that had a lot of players returning from a 16-2 team that reached the PIAA District 1 Class AAA semifinals last season. What is unique is how the Tigers have reached this point, not pounding teams into submission as they did last year, but winning with a nice mixture of guile, pitching, timely hitting and a discipline at the plate.

Marple Newtown is a target of every team it faces, and this week could be telling as to where exactly the Tigers are and could serve as an indication of where they could be going this year as a Class AAAA (large school) team.

Marple Newtown will play Inter-Academic League power Haverford School on Monday, and then play a sort of truncated doubleheader on Wednesday, completing a suspended game at Penncrest at 12-noon, leading 5-2 in the fifth inning, and then returning to Marple Newtown to host another Inter-Ac power in Malvern Prep at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday.

Then the Tigers have an exciting game at an exciting venue on Thursday, when they play Central League challenger Garnet Valley at Blue Rocks Stadium in Wilmington, Delaware at 3:45 p.m.

“Coming into the program, what I thought I might find, knowing the success this team has had, was a certain amount of arrogance,” Tigers’ first-year coach Steve Smith said. “The truth is, I haven’t found anything like that at all. These guys enjoy playing the game, they enjoy each other’s company and they like competing together. We’ve changed some things. Stats on the team are privy to just the coaching staff, and we don’t have names on the backs of anyone’s jersey. I have a team filled with a bunch of good players, and we have so many good players that are sophomores and juniors that could probably play varsity in most programs.”

Yes, that’s how deep the Tigers are.

“Our starting pitching has done very well, and our bats have started a little slow, but as a team we’re playing well,” Tigers’ senior first baseman Brian Leon said. “Garrett Wrambel, Todd Scott and JM Schork have all stepped up for us pitching. We need to stay focused and keep practicing hard. Last year, I think we started to think we could win every game by just showing up. We took things for granted.”

“That’s definitely changed this year," said Todd. "The other thing that has changed is we’re winning in different ways. This time last year, we won a bunch of games by 10-run rule. This year we’re beating teams doing little things that will help us down the road. And I really think it will definitely help us.”

As will the possibility of sweeping this week’s four-game slate.

“This will be a huge week because we’ll see how we stand with the better teams that are around us,” Marple Newtown senior shortstop Kurt Johnson said. “I think this week we will find out how good we are. A lot of things are going right, and the fact that as a team, there is pressure and we’re seeing everyone’s best pitcher. In the long run, it will help us. It is mental. There will be no switch we have to turn on, because it will already be on. If we maintain playing at a high level, it will be sort of be like a habit and we’ll know what we’ll need to do to later this year.”