Sports
Woonsocket Junior Varsity Baseball: Villa Novans Clinch Championship
Woonsocket High School's JV baseball team will finish the regular season in first place after defeating North Smithfield May 14.
The Woonsocket Villa Novans improved to 9-1 in league play and locked up the No. 1 seed for the Division II-North postseason tournament with a come-from-behind, 10-9 win yesterday at against the Northmen.
Scott Tucker’s two-out single to left field in the eighth inning plated Jason Garfield-DeMontigny—Saturday’s winning pitcher—and capped a late-game comeback that began with Woonsocket trailing, 9-3.
“We battled. That’s what we teach my guys. No matter what the score is, we battle,” said WHS head coach Josh Zielinski.
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The Villa Novans scored six runs in the seventh inning to negate the deficit, and after Garfield-DeMontigny pitched a scoreless eighth, they walked off with the Division-II North regular-season crown.
The seventh-inning rally included a two-run single for Tucker, another for Victor Hunt, an RBI-single from Jake Laprade and a game-tying, sacrifice fly from Bryan Arias.
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“It was contagious, right through the order,” Zielinski said. “We roll out of bed, we’ll score 10 runs. That’s what we do.”
The Villa Novans’ high-powered offense struggled to get going Saturday, however, and North Smithfield High School established an advantage with runs in the first, second, third and fourth innings.
NSHS added another run in the seventh, but after six strong innings, freshman right-hander Dylan Narodowy and the Northmen unraveled.
“It looked like they tightened up, [but] that’s a good team” Zielinski said.
The Villa Novans are now 13-4 overall, and they will carry a four-game winning streak into the regular-season finale at Ponaganset. After Monday’s meeting with the 8-4 Chieftains, WHS will advance to the Division-II North semifinals.
“We haven’t had many close games, so it’s good to play these types of games, just to get them ready for playoffs,” Zielinski said.
With the regular-season title in hand, the Villa Novans will bypass the tournament’s first round, and they will need just one win to earn a berth in the Division-II North championship game.
