Mainland edges Millville in great start to Coaches vs. Cancer Classic

By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
SOMERS POINT — Mainland may have won the game, beating Millville on the strength of a three-run homer from junior center fielder Devin Sharkey and some solid pitching from seniors Nick Atohi, but everyone was a winner Friday night at the kickoff of the seventh annual Coaches vs. Cancer Classic.
The invitational tournament — which annually features some of the best teams in South Jersey and raises money for the American Cancer Society and other local charities — moved from Millville to Mainland this year, and if the opening game was any indication, it will be a tremendous tournament. The Classic continues on Saturday with four games beginning at 9 a.m., and finished up with four more games on Sunday. The tournament was launched by former Millville assistant baseball coach Mike Edwards, who now is an assistant at Mainland and who lost his mother to cancer, as well as Thunderbolts head coach Roy Hallenbeck, who lost his father to cancer and whose wife, Kim, is a breast cancer survivor.
Millville jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first off Atohi, but Mainland answered with a run in the bottom of the first to cut the lead in half, and the big blow came in bottom of the second when Sharkey launched a three-run home run to right-center field after Mark Elliott had tied the game with a bloop single to center.

“I was looking for a fastball away, and I took it away,” Sharkey said. “That home run felt really good, and this atmosphere was perfect to hit a home run. I don’t think anything can get better than this. I live five minutes away, and to come here, play baseball in front of more than 100 people, and to hit a home run was probably one of the best feelings I’ve had in my life so far.”
Mainland scored another run on an infield error in the third, but Millville didn’t go away, as senior third baseman Luis Vargas launched a two-run homer down the left-field line to cut the lead to 6-4.
“Coach told us before we left that this would be no different than if we were playing it at home. We’re playing for people who have fought through cancer, and for those we’ve lost. All day in school we were anticipating it, and having coach Edwards on the other side gave us an extra push to come out here and play hard,” Vargas said. “We had a good run, but came up short. We have a couple of starters hurt, so we’re trying to fight through that. We have a tough schedule coming up, so we’ll see what happens.”
Atohi allowed the first two Millville batters to reach base to start the fifth, and Mustangs coach Billy Kern turned to Hunter Rich to shut down the rally. Rich did just that, getting a pair of come-backers to get out of the jam. He pitched a scoreless sixth and seventh innings to earn the save.
“He did it perfectly, coming in with two guys on and getting us out of that inning, he couldn’t have done it better than that. And to keep them down the rest of the game, he really pulled through for us and helped us win this game,” Sharkey said of Rich.
“My only mindset is, I want to focus on the batter because that’s the most important out, the guy at the plate. If I can get him out, I don’t need to worry about the runners on base,” Rich said. “This is a huge win for us, coming here and playing hard against a really good hitting team like Millville. It was a close game the whole way, we were battling back and forth. We were hitting well, they were hitting well, and we happened to get on top thanks to my boy Sharkey hitting that home run.”

“I want to thank Somers Point. They put on a great show. They were out here working since about 8 a.m., the public works guys — and Brian Hartley, Joe Loefflad, Al Becker, Bill Rauzzino — all these guys were out here all day long to make sure we were able to play today. And the community came out, which was fantastic. That was the idea behind opening the tournament locally, under the lights. I think we’ll keep doing this for years to come. And, thankfully, we had a great ball game,” Kern said. “It was good baseball by both teams, pitchers battled. It felt like in the beginning it was going to be a hitting kind of night. It felt like a good night to be up at the plate. It hasn’t been warm like this for a while, so I expected a little back-and-forth. I was happy with the way we persevered. Nick battled on a day he probably didn’t have his best stuff, and Hunter was fantastic closing the door.”
Hallenbeck said the Bolts could never really recover from Sharkey’s blast, but he also said the night was about much more than a win or a loss.
“The big inning hurt us. In that second inning, we just couldn’t minimize the damage, but I felt really good about the way our kids fought back and gave us a chance. It was two teams going at it really hard. It was a good high school baseball game,” he said. “I love the venue. I’ve said this to some people, it’s not where you are, it’s who you are with. I was able to be with my family for the first pitch, which is really important to me. And even though Mike Edwards is on the other side now, wearing a different color, we were here together. We started this together, so if it had to move, I can’t think of a better place for it to be.”
(Editor’s note: Look for several feature stories about the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic in the May 11 print edition of Glory Days Magazine, and check out photo galleries all weekend long at glorydaysonline.com. Any money raised through the sale of photos from the tournament will be donated by Glory Days to the cause.)
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays