by Jonathan Vander Lugt

Three weeks ago, Germantown Academy baseball ended the third week of Inter-Ac games playing .500 baseball. The Patriots were coming off a resounding 8-2 win over archrival Penn Charter, and had beaten Malvern Prep for the first time in almost a decade a week and a half prior.

Only one game back in the league standings, GA was in the conference title conversation for the first time in years. Head coach Tim Ginter’s team had proven that they could play with – and beat – anybody in the league.

Then, in game seven, they fell to Springside Chestnut Hill 4-2.

“We fell apart a little bit there because we got away from things we were doing well,” Ginter said. Three days later, Malvern Prep blew GA out with a 12-1 win.

In game nine, the Pats dropped fell to the Episcopal Academy 5-2—another close loss.

“We’d make errors like not catching the ball,” Ginter continued. “When things aren’t going well, that stuff tends to happen at the worst possible time.”

Looking to salvage a win against the Haverford School in the season’s final game, GA carried a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the sixth.

“You start to second guess yourself and you spiral a little bit,” Ginter said. “We just weren’t playing the same brand of baseball.”

The Fords went on to walk off, 5-4. What had been a promising league season for GA baseball ended with a resounding thud.

Slipping through the cracks of a dark end, however, are a few rays of light. The Patriots, for the first time in Ginter’s tenure, played each league opponent closely. They were one of just two teams to beat the eventual league champ Malvern Prep, and as Ginter put it, his players “began to put on GA jerseys expecting to win.”

“We showed this year that we can play with anybody and that was important for us. No one likes to lose, but it’s different when you lose by five or six,” he said. “You can say until you’re blue in the face that ‘oh, we were in it until the wheels fell off in the fourth or fifth inning.’ That doesn’t mean nearly as much as playing until the very end.”

In their opening loss against Penn Charter, they had the tying run on base in the last inning, and they almost matched the Fords pitch-for-pitch in their early-season 2-1 loss. They held a lead late in the season-ender, and other than the second Malvern game, didn’t lose a game by more than three runs.

Last season, GA didn’t lose a conference game by less than that margin.

“You can hone in on one or two plays in a one-run loss,” Ginter said.

When the losses are greater, the deficits are more structural because there’s more to fix than just a play here or there. This year, that wasn’t the case. If a few balls had bounced differently, GA could have legitimately been a .500 ball club.

“I totally believe that the culture is moving in the right direction,” Ginter said. “Other teams in the league are starting to realize that we’re not a bottom-feeder any more. There’s talent in the program.”

That talent has one more chance his week at the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA, from this point forward) tournament to close the season strong. It’s a 14-team tournament where the first two seeds get first round byes.

The Pats will take on the Perkiomen School Tuesday. If they win, they’ll have a quick turnaround and head to second-seeded Mercersburg on Thursday. The last three games (two semifinals and the final) of the tournament will take place on Saturday.

“For us, it’s a chance to bounce back a little bit. We went into the season with three goals,” Ginter said. The first was to be competitive in every league game, and finish better in the standings than last year.”

“Technically we accomplished that,” he said, “but we don’t feel great about it considering we lost four in a row to end it.”

The second goal: have an overall winning record.

“We fell a little short there,” Ginter said of his 8-12 Patriots. “The final one was to play on Saturday at the PAISAAs. When you finish 3-7 and in last place for the third straight year, you look for anything you can do to get the kids revved up again and play competitive baseball.”

Germantown Academy All-League Honorees:

First Team: Colten Smith (Jr.) RHP

Second Team: Mike Reilly (Sr.) SS; Jack Sullivan (Sr.) 1B

Around the Area:

Though Springside Chestnut Hill, Penn Charter, Germantown Academy and Germantown Friends all had non-league games scheduled for last week, a spate of rainouts kept them from getting any significant playing time in.

All four will participate in the PAISAA upcoming PAISAA tournament Tuesday. Each game starts at 4:00pm. PC and GFS will duel each other at Penn Charter, while SCH and GA will host the Hill School and travel to the Perkiomen School, respectively.

La Salle was supposed play in the Philadelphia Catholic League quarterfinal Saturday, but it got moved – guess why – Monday at 4:00pm. The top-seeded Explorers will host St. Joseph’s Prep.

Springside Chestnut Hill All-League Honorees:

First Team: Aidan “Curly” Frye (Sr.) RHP; Joe Jaconski (Fr.) SS; Pat Elliott (Jr.) OF

Second Team: Jared Sprague-Lott (So.) IF

La Salle All-League Honorees:

First Team: Eric Marasheski (Sr.) IF; Andrew Cossetti (Sr.) C; Anthony Cossetti (Sr.) OF; Joe Miller (Sr.) LHP

Second Team: Jack Ruch (Sr.) IF; Gavin Moretski (Jr.) RHP

Andrew Cossetti was voted Offensive Player of the Year

Eric Marasheski was voted Defensive Player of the Year

Information from TedSilary.com was used in this article.