Germantown Academy's Dakota Barbet (11) congratulated by catcher Shane Harkins after scoring a second-inning run on Tuesday. Barbet came around again in the fifth, and finished 1-for-3 with two runs scored and one driven in. (Photo by Jonathan Vander Lugt)

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

For lack of a kinder way to put it, Germantown Academy baseball has spent the last half-decade in the dumps. Its current seniors have only five varsity wins since they’ve been in high school, and the run of losing seasons extends back to their seventh-grade year.

2017 was dreadful by just about any measure, and was most certainly the worst year in recent team history. The Pats managed just one Inter-Ac win, a 1-0 late-season victory over Springside Chestnut Hill. None of its nine losses came by less than three runs, and the total run differential on their conference slate was a negative-68.

The Patriots led of 2018 with another L – a 6-5 home loss to Penn Charter last Tuesday – but third-year head coach Tim Ginter is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Penn Charter is a good team,” he said. “Until someone proves otherwise, they’re the champs. That being said, we feel like we let this one get away a little bit.”

GA struck first, on Mike Reilly’s bases-loaded walk in the second inning. Junior Jack Popolizio was perfect through two innings before Dean Bergmann came around on a wild pitch after a third-inning double.

This would turn out to be a theme. Tom Snipes singled on a grounder past the second baseman to lead off the next inning, swiped a pair of bags and scored when Popolizio uncorked another wild pitch. With two outs in the next frame, Shane McCafferty doubled, advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored on a passed ball.

Two innings later, Tra Womack came around – the last run of the inning’s three-spot – on yet another wild pitch. By then, Popolizio was out and replaced by Wes Champlin.

“You can’t allow a team to score three runs on wild pitches or passed balls – whatever the case may be,” Ginter said. “In this league, we can’t afford to have that happen to us again.”

That’s not to say GA went down without a fight.

“At the same time, there are a ton of positives to take out of this. Jack was great, and our offense has a lot of fight in it,” Ginter said. “They can’t allow the to dictate what to take from the game.”

Down 3-1 in the fifth, back-to-back RBI hits by Dakota Barbet and Luke Strauss knotted the game. When PC ran a 6-3 lead heading into the bottom of the sixth, Popolizio cracked an RBI double, immediately followed by a Shane Harkins RBI groundout.

Down by one in the bottom of the seventh, GA put the tying run on third with its cleanup hitter due up. It didn’t work out – Drew Yuskevitch struck out looking to end the game – but the fact that the Pats hung in late speaks volumes to Ginter.

“I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface with this,” Ginter said. “We’ve struggled at times over the past two years to score runs consistently, but I think we can be successful offensively. We’re coming along on defense as well, although it might not have always been on display today.”

Popolizio finished with eight strikeouts in four and two thirds innings pitched, and finished 1-for-4 with a pair of runs alongside his RBI double, while Barbet also notched a pair of runs in his 1-for-3 day. Both leadoff man Mike Reilly and nine-hole hitter Grant Giampalmi finished with two hits each, the only Patriots to tally more than one.

GA lost another close one on Friday – 4-2 to Springside Chestnut Hill – where two more errors led to a pair of Blue Devil runs, but Ginter remains optimistic.

“As far as what we want to accomplish and my message to the team, we’re moving in the right direction. I think we’re in a very good place. At the same time, the league is tough,” he said. “These guys have worked hard, and this group has almost been with me since day one. We’re happy about the progress but the kids want to start seeing wins. We still believe that there is a lot in us moving forward.”

The Inter-Ac season is just five weeks long – so while it feels like the season just started, at 0-2, it’s already 20 percent over. Next week, GA will travel to Malvern Prep to take on the Friars Tuesday before heading to the Episcopal Academy on Thursday.

“We expect today to be a little bit of a microcosm of what it’s going to look like this year,” Ginter said on Tuesday. “We want to be in games until the final at-bat, and we trust that more times than not we’re going to be able to pull through.”