By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
HAMILTON — In the first inning of the Non-Public B state baseball championship, Gloucester Catholic’s first-base coach looked like an equipment salesman. He was covered from head to toe in elbow guards, shin guards, hand guards — you name it. He looked like he had a suit of armor on.
That’s how many Rams batters reached base in a seven-run outburst that lead to Gloucester Catholic cruising to a 10-0, five-inning mercy-rule-shortened state championship win over St. Thomas Aquinas on Friday at Veterans Park.
The Rams — who once held the No. 1 spot in nj.com’s statewide Top 20 poll — showed just how good they are with a completely dominant effort against the Trojans. Senior right-hander Tate DeRias, a University of Miami commit, lit up the radar gun, reaching as high as 94 miles-per-hour. He tossed a no-hitter, allowing just two walks. The first 13 outs he recorded came via the strikeout. He was simply untouchable.
“He’s been one of our leaders and he’s been great all year for us, on the mound and at the plate. He has to be considered for Player of the Year in the state with the numbers he’s put up on the mound and at the plate. I can’t imagine anybody having a better year than the one he’s had for us. He’s done it all,” said Rams coach Dennis Barth. “Tate has been dominant all year. Getting 13 strikeouts in a row is pretty tough to do, but he’s been that good where he’s struck out a lot of guys all year. He was a little hyped up so I think he was throwing a little harder than usual. He’s been the man for us all year.”
“I felt really good. I got on the mound in the first inning and felt the adrenaline going, state championship game. This is where we wanted to be. This is our goal every year here at GC,” DeRias said. “It was a big adrenaline rush out there, and I threw well. Everybody swung the bats well, we came in here and did what we had to do, and walked out with a ‘W.’ I’ve had couple games with 12 or 13 strikeouts, but not all in a row like that. That was pretty cool. It was awesome.”
DeRias was so dominant that only two of his teammates even needed their gloves on the field — catcher Braeden Lipoff and center fielder Jake Terranova, who caught the final out in the fifth inning. The only two balls hit into fair play were a bunt in front of the plate that Lipoff handled with ease and that routine flyout to Terranova.
“I could have gone out there with my bare hands. It’s fun competing with him. He’s my brother and I’m going to miss him, but he’s going to do great things with his career. He’s going to go shove at Miami and he’s going to shove in the big leagues, that’s what I think,” said third baseman Guy Lynam, who went 3-for-3 with two runs scored and an RBI. “We came into this game thinking that good run support for Tate would be four runs, and we went out and got seven in the first. We got shut down for three innings, but we came back in the fifth and knew what we had to do.”
DeRias struck out the side in the top of the first inning, and a half inning later, the game was basically over. Noah Danza started off a seven-run rally with a leadoff single, and a few batters later, Lipoff got Gloucester Catholic (27-2, 10-0 Tri-County Royal) on the board with an RBI single to right. Another run scored on a wild pitch, and after consecutive doubles by DeRias and Lynam, the Rams led 4-0. Jason Bogart and Gavin Franchetti also contributed to the rally with run-scoring hits.
“I was expecting a much tighter game because the kid who started pitching for them is pretty good, but we hit him well. Our young guys came through with a lot of hits. Guy Lynam had a big day at the plate,” Barth said.
The Rams ended the game in the fifth when two runs scored on an error with the bases loaded, followed by Brady Belfus ending the game with a drive into the gap in left-center that chased home GC’s 10th run.
“It felt great that guys just started barreling balls up. I had a two-strike double,” DeRias said. “Scoring seven runs (in the first inning) was great. We’re happy to come out and win it in five innings.”
It was the 21st state championship in the storied history of Gloucester Catholic, which started the season on a 19-game winning streak before falling to Cherry Hill West in the Diamond Classic semifinals. The Rams also suffered a loss to Delbarton in late May. The Rams finished the season on a five-game winning streak.
“It’s baseball, it’s hard to go undefeated,” Barth said. “We lost two games this year — one to a good Cherry Hill West team that turned three double plays against us. It’s hard to win when you hit into three double plays. And we lost at Delbarton where we outhit them 8-3, it was just one of those days. We’re still young and we have to get a lot better, but we’re aggressive and we’re going to make mistakes.”
“All along, truth be told, we knew we were the top dogs. We went through a little bit of a rough patch, but we all knew we were going to snap out of it. It just took the right game and I think today was a pretty good game to snap out of it,” Lynam said. “(Losing in the Diamond) kind of killed two birds with one stone — it took away our undefeated season and knocked us out of the Diamond, so we had some motivation. We didn’t want to go home empty handed.”
Gloucester Catholic put up another memorable year in its storied history, as the team batted .348, had 268 hits, 100-plus stolen bases and compiled a 1.53 earned-run average with 249 strikeouts.
“Since the start of the year, everybody knew we were going to be a team that could compete for South Jersey and state championships. That was the goal. Obviously, we wanted to win the Diamond Classic, but we had a tough loss (to Cherry Hill West). Both of our losses were close and came down to the end. We could have won every game this year, but we dropped two, but it was still a pretty historic season. I was happy to be a part of it. It’s not just a one-man show, it’s everybody. Everybody deserves their props — even the guys who didn’t play much, they help out at practice, and that’s why Gloucester Catholic is so good,” DeRias said. “Gloucester Catholic, it’s nitty-gritty, it’s the toughest form of baseball. We practice so much. All the coaches buy in and they want it just as bad as we do. We never complain because we know they don’t get paid much at all. Coach Barth puts so much into this program. Coming to GC, you know you have to be a real baseball player. You have to want to win, because that’s what we do at GC.”
Added Lynam, “we’ve been saying this whole time that South Jersey baseball isn’t South Jersey baseball without GC. That’s the truth. You come to GC to play in these types of games, and you come to GC to compete. You’re not going to walk in here and have anything handed to you, you have to compete for everything. I love these guys and all these coaches. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sullyglorydays@gmail.com
