By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
HADDONFIELD — Back on April 26, the Paul VI High baseball team was scuffling. Starting shortstop Sean Taylor had missed time due to a school trip to Italy, and star center fielder Mason Myers was injured. The Eagles got blasted, 12-5, by Clearview in the Pop McKenna Tournament and had lost five of their last six games.
But things can turn around quickly in high school baseball.
Since that loss, the Eagles have won 6-of-7, including a 3-2 nailbiter of visiting Audubon on Tuesday afternoon. With four Olympic National games remaining, the team that started the season 3-7 suddenly has a shot to win a division title. In the last two weeks, the Eagles have beaten Bishop Eustace — the No. 16 team in the state — as well as a 12-win Kingsway team and Audubon, the first-place team in the Colonial Conference’s Liberty Division.
“We’re getting it together,” PVI coach DM Phillips said after the win over the Green Wave. “We had a little bit of a rough patch. Sean Taylor, our starting shortstop, was in Italy for a school trip, and Mason Myers was hurt for about a week and a half. So, we didn’t have those two for about six games. We weathered the storm, everybody is healthy now and we’re starting to put it together. We’re starting to figure it out at the right time.”
Sophomore pitcher Will Howell wiggled out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the top of the second — allowing just one run — and put together his best outing of the season, striking out a season-high seven batters while allowing just one walk, three hits and zero earned runs in a complete game.
“I felt great. All my pitches were working — curveball, fastball, splitter, they were all moving well,” said Howell, a Mt. Laurel resident and transfer from Holy Cross Prep. “I saw the ump was calling those pitches on the outside corner, so I was working the outside. I was starting my splitter in, then getting the fastball outside and getting them looking.”
“When he’s throwing like that — against anyone, I don’t care who we’re playing — I have faith that we’re going to win,” said senior second baseman Keegan McGravey. “Especially when he’s showing resiliency like he did. We obviously want to play better in the field for him, and we didn’t do that today, but when he’s going after it on the next pitch and getting the next hitter that’s so huge for everybody in the field. Everyone knows he’s behind us, and we’re going to try to be behind him.”
An error, a walk and a hit batsman loaded the bases with one out in the second, but Howell then got a strikeout before a play wasn’t made on a grounder, allowing Audubon to score the game’s first run.
“I know errors happen, they are part of the game. I just try to overcome that and just fight through it, and keep letting my defense work,” Howell said. “I was just thinking about the next batter, whoever comes up I’m just thinking about the situation and what I have to do to get through it. I was 100 percent confident I could shut them down. I feel like the deeper I go into game, the better I feel.”
With two outs and the bases still loaded, Howell induced a groundout to Taylor at shortstop to end the threat and keep his team in the game.
“That was big. We’ve had a couple times throughout the season when it’s been bases loaded, in these last seven games or so, where it could have gotten out of hand, but we’ve had guys stepping up and making big plays to get out of jams like that,” McGravey said. “One thing I think Will was doing a great job of today was throwing first-pitch strikes, and that was huge. That’s your favorite thing as a fielder, because when he’s getting ahead like that you know you’re getting the ball hit to you or he’s going to K the guy up. When he’s consistently doing that, it gives everyone in the field so much confidence.”
“He transferred in from Holy Cross. He’s a great kid who works his butt off, and, as you can see, he can really get after it on the mound. He kept his composure when we weren’t fielding the ball too cleanly in the second and third innings. He kept it together, kept us in it, and we ended up scratching three runs across,” Phillips said. “When he beared down and got us out of that inning, that was a turning point. You can look at that as one of the key moments of the game.”
Audubon (14-4, 4-1 Colonial Liberty) tacked on a run in the third when senior Trent Bantle reached on an infield single, took second on an errant pickoff attempt, stole third and scored on a throwing error. But Paul VI (9-8, 6-2 Olympic National) battled back behind Mason, a junior and Coastal Carolina University commit. He blasted a solo home run in the bottom of the third, and three batters later the Eagles tied the game, 2-2, on an RBI single by Dom DiGialleonardo. Mason drove home the eventual winning run in the bottom of the fourth with a run-scoring double to deep right field.
“He’s had a big impact,” Howell said of Myers. “Him getting that big hit really got our dugout going, and that really hyped me up.”
“We’re getting to the point now where I feel like we can beat anybody we step on the field against,” Phillips said. “We beat Kingsway, we beat Bishop Eustace and now Audubon in the last week and a half, so that’s pretty good. We weathered the storm and now we’re confident. It makes it a lot easier when Mason is in center field and Sean is at shortstop. Everybody can take a deep breath. We’re more confident now when we take the field, which is big.”
Howell did the rest, allowing just two base runners in the final three innings.
“At the start of the season, we knew we had something, we just had to find it. I think we’re just starting to play better as a team and not really worried about what we’re doing on our own. We’re picking each other up. The biggest thing for us has been resilience. At the beginning of the season we kind of had one inning where things would fall apart, but now we’re starting to make the big plays to get out of an inning. When we get down, we’re not staying down, we’re rallying,” said McGravey, an East Greenwich resident. “In the beginning of the season a lot of guys were struggling, but we knew that wasn’t who we were. It was kind of just having conversations about what we needed to do. What we were doing was fixable, we just needed a better approach at the plate and pick each other up in the field. I think having those conversations after practice and after games were big.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Paul VI travels to Sterling on Friday at 3:45 p.m. Audubon hosts Haddon Heights on Thursday at 3:45 p.m.
