Cape/Georgetown Junior All-Stars win District 3 title

Baseball championships are in style down in Cape Henlopen this year. 

Just over a month after Cape Henlopen High School’s baseball team won its first state title in program history, Cape’s Junior League team accomplished a feat on a smaller scale. 

As a combined Little League team with Georgetown, the local baseball youth sluggers took down the Nanticoke/Laurel All-Stars by a score of 7-2 to win the District 3 championship and earn a spot in the state championships next week.  

Behind starting pitcher Nick Cox’s stellar six-inning performance, the Cape/Georgetown All-Stars will play again Wednesday, July 25, right back at the Millsboro Little League complex. 

“It’s a good feeling. These players worked really hard to get here,” said manager Zac Crouch. “They hadn’t given up all tournament, and it showed tonight when we were kind of down a little bit from the perspective of them getting a couple hits, but we battled back and put runs on the board. And that’s what makes it enjoyable.” 

The Nanticoke/Laurel All-Stars came into the game riding a grueling Monday night performance against Lower Sussex, a game that took more than three hours to complete. After using several pitchers in that performance, the Nanticoke/Laurel All-Stars turned to Jayden Snyder to start the game off right from the pitcher’s mound. 

The opening two innings were almost carbon copies of each other. In the first inning, both Cox and Snyder escaped a tricky bases-loaded situation to get out unscathed. The next three batters for both lineups failed to get on base in the second inning. 

Fatigue began to set in for Snyder in the third inning before he was replaced by Timmy Jones after throwing 41 pitches and striking out four batters. Jones, who came into the game with runners on first and third, gave up four runs in the third inning. 

Malikye Wells crushed an RBI to left field to bring in Timmy Hitchcock for the game’s opening run, while Josh Reinhold, Wells and Cox all scored to stretch the lead to 4-0 entering the bottom of the third. 

The Nanticoke/Laurel All-Stars answered through an Ayden Bell RBI that saw Brady Lee score the team’s first run. Jones then started to get into a rhythm with a combination of fastballs and curveballs, unsettling the Cape/Georgetown All-Stars offense.  

Jones’ single to center field brought Sean Martinez home in the bottom of the fourth inning to cut the score in half. While that run gave the Nanticoke/Laurel All-Stars hope of avoiding elimination and a second-place finish, 4-2 would be as close as they would get.  

Cox then had an eventful fifth inning. It was Cox’s RBI that brought Wells home to make the score 5-2 in the top of the fifth, but he put in his best work on the pitcher’s mound during that inning, as it took only five pitches to get all three outs. Yet, it was behind phenomenal defensive fielding that the Cape/Georgetown All-Stars were able to stay in control of the game, exemplified best by third baseman Vinny Dilorio’s superb long throw to get the second out. 

Cox had thrown some of his best pitches of the ballgame as his pitch count reached 77, only 18 away from the junior league pitching count limit. 

“Nick did a phenomenal job,” Crouch said. “He went six innings, which helped us. He battled in full counts to come back and strike the batters out, so you can’t ask for a better outing by him, for him to go six innings in a junior league game. It helped us from a pitching side, but you know we have so much pitching it just makes us that much stronger going into states.”  

Kensith Taylor and Justin Marsh scored the final two runs of the game. Cox finished pitching 99 times, striking out four batters. 

“This is my third time going to states, and we won in 2016 and went to Regionals,” Cox said. “We have a chance [to do the same this time around].” 

For the Cape/Georgetown All-Stars to make it back to the coveted Regional Tournaments this year, they’ll have to listen to their manager.  

“If we play baseball the way we’re capable of playing baseball, and we hit the ball and the amount of pitching we have, we’ll definitely make a good run,” Crouch said.