By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
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RICHLAND — The Christian Brothers Academy baseball team rolled down the Garden State Parkway in a big charter bus on Thursday afternoon fresh off an upset over top-seeded Immaculata earlier in the week. The Colts were brimming with confidence that they could take home the Non-Public A South championship.
But what they may not have known is that St. Augustine Prep senior Alex Weingartner is built different. While most high school baseball players are grabbing a sandwich and heading to the couch to ice their arms after games, the New Jersey Gatorade State Player of the Year is putting in a two-hour workout — after every game.
He’s not just a baseball player — baseball is his life. He lives it, breathes it, eats it, lets it soak into his skin.
Soaking into his skin after another impressive performance on the mound was nothing but sweat and the sweet taste of victory. Weingartner twirled a two-hit shutout over CBA, leading the Hermits a 6-0 win and their ninth sectional championship in the last decade, 13th overall. Weingartner — who’s a Major League Baseball draft prospect as a hitter, zipped his fastball in there in the low 90s all day and mixed in a wipeout slider to carve his way through a lineup that won 18 games, including 11 in a row entering the game, and captured the Shore Conference Tournament championship.
The pitching dominance followed his offensive prowess just a few days prior, when Weingartner sent the Hermits into the sectional title game with a walk-off grand slam in a 7-4 win over Red Bank Catholic in the semifinal round.
“It was a tough act to follow after the other day, and then that was the sequel. And sometimes the sequel is even better,” said Prep coach Mike Ney.
Ney took a trip to the mound in the top of the sixth inning as Weingartner’s pitch count started to creep up near 100, but it was perfunctory. There wasn’t even anybody getting loose in the bullpen.
“He and I have had a plan all year in terms of taking care of his arm, obviously with him being a two-way guy. He did not want to give the ball up. There was nothing taking him out of the game — it was his to finish,” Ney said. “To have a guy like that — an ultimate competitor who wants to go out there and take care of business and take us to where we’re supposed to be — I’m just super proud of him for what he’s done. Big-time players step up in big-time games. That’s the epitome of what just happened in the last three days.”
Weingartner helped himself out on offense, too, leading off the bottom of the first with a single, stealing second, then stealing third and scoring on a wild throw to give the Hermits an early 1-0 cushion. He got some help from his teammates in the third when John Eddis knocked in a run with a fielder’s choice grounder after Prep had loaded the bases, and Hank Biglin followed with an infield single that drove in Brady Jackson to push the lead to 3-0. St. Augustine added a run in the fourth on another fielder’s choice RBI groundout, this time off the bat of Jackson, and the lead reached 6-0 in the sixth when Jackson ripped a run-scoring single to right and D.J. Lloyd followed with an RBI single up the middle.
Jackson also made some tremendous plays at shortstop to help preserve Weingartner’s shutout, and that was no small feat considering Jackson could have missed the entire season with a left hand injury. He returned from hamate bone surgery in just four weeks, however, and has provided a huge spark to a St. Augustine Prep team that has won three straight after a tough stretch in which the Hermits lost three times in four games, including getting bounced out of both the Cape-Atlantic League Tournament and Diamond Classic before the championship rounds.
“He’s an absolute dog. We had a few times throughout the season when we were missing one of our best players for a long part of it. For him to go through surgery, come back from what he had to and go through some trials and errors — he still hasn’t been completely right at the plate and in the field, but to just work his way through it, mentally he’s one of the better kids I’ve been around,” Ney said. “And it seems like the bigger the games are getting, the better he’s starting to play. We’re hitting our stride at the right time.”
The Hermits now turn their attention to next week’s state championship game against North Jersey champion Delbarton — a rematch of the 2024 title game, won 12-5 by the Hermits in a game that spanned two days due to stormy weather.
WHAT’S NEXT: St. Augustine Prep and Delbarton will play for the Non-Public Group A state championship on June 10 at Rutgers University, time TBD.
