West Deptford Majors Wallop Woodbury, Take District 15 Title

Kyle Kaminski opened the floodgates on a single pitch Friday night.

In shades of his performance , the left fielder jumped on the first offering from Woodbury’s Spencer Sklivas for a single.

Four batters later, he was crossing home plate, the first of West Deptford’s eye-popping 11 runs in the inning that eventually culminated in a 17-6, five-inning mercy-rule win over their cross-town rivals and the team’s second straight District 15 championship.

Kaminski wasn’t trying to do anything fancy as West Deptford’s leadoff hitter—he wasn’t worried about trying to launch another bomb from the outset, as he did against Glassboro, but the effort was no less effective.

“I was just looking to make contact and score runs,” he said.

It may very well have been the team’s mantra, as West Deptford racked up 15 hits on the night, none of them the long balls featured in their previous game.

The game was a scorekeeper’s nightmare—West Deptford came just shy of batting around twice in the first inning, and a half-dozen Woodbury errors kept letting West Deptford push even more baserunners around the infield.

Kaminski and Adrian Mason each had two hits in the first inning alone, driving in six runs between them.

Add in two RBIs and two hits from Jared Schultes, two runs scored by Cole Malsbury and Tommy Sampson’s RBI and two runs scored, and the offense was never in doubt.

The defense was solid, as well—Kyle Magee went four strong innings, striking out five Woodbury batters and, unlike the two teams’ meeting a week ago, allowed just three walks, and West Deptford didn’t commit an error in the field.

Going into the bottom of the first with an 11-run cushion was a big help, Magee said.

“I didn’t have to have that much pressure on me,” he said.

Woodbury’s bats found some life in the second and third innings, though.

Teddy Sparks roused his teammates with a monster solo shot to deep left center that, had it not crashed through sycamore branches 30 feet up, might have carried out to Grove Avenue.

An inning later, Cullen Davis crushed one to straightaway center to help cut West Deptford’s lead down to six.

But with some speed on the basepaths from Gabe Crowley, Jake Keuler and Schultes, plus some poor fielding on Woodbury’s part, West Deptford widened the gap back to nine in the fourth.

“We all came to our senses and started working as a team and having fun,” Kaminski said.

The fun part of it probably explained the shark-style rally caps the team sported in the fifth, as they tried to push it back to a 10-run lead for the mercy-rule victory. A handful of singles and some more smart moves around the bases got them there, and it was up to Matt Knestaut to close things out on the mound.

Though Knestaut was a bit erratic at first, issuing a couple of walks, he turned that around with a strikeout and a quick lineout, before closing out the championship on a comebacker to the mound.

While he didn’t expect the wild, high-scoring affair the championship turned into—especially not after West Deptford’s 7-6 nail-biter of a win over Woodbury in pool play last week—coach Gus Knestaut said it was no surprise the two teams ended up together in the big game.

“We said, ‘Guys, Woodbury’s going to play West Deptford in the finals,’ ” he said. “We’ve been saying it since January, and it came to fruition.”

Oddly enough, he added, there was a little bit of an edge to the title game, thanks to the precedent set by other West Deptford Majors teams that, like this one, also won the District 15 10- and 11-year-old championship.

“The pressure was on our guys a little bit,” Gus Knestaut said.

But given they’ve been playing baseball together nearly half their young lives, the pressure wasn’t all that great.

“They’re just a good group of kids,” he said.

The title puts the team into the Section 4 tournament against a familiar foe in Cherry Hill Atlantic, with sectional play opening Monday night in Cherry Hill, and Gus Knestaut said he likes the team’s chances.

“We can hit the ball with anybody,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll do a bit better in sectionals than last year.”