WESTWOOD – With an early-inning rally and a walk-off hit by pitch, Xaverian completed the season sweep of St. John’s Shrewsbury to earn their third straight Catholic Conference title.
Nolan Rappoli took a 0-2 pitch off his elbow with the bases loaded and one down as the Hawks escaped with a 10-9 win at home over a tough Pioneers squad.
“(St. John’s) pushed us right to the wall,” said Xaverian coach Gerry Lambert. “Every year that we play in the Catholic Conference I think playing games like this puts us hopefully in a good position to be a little bit prepared for that inevitable up and down in the postseason.”
Entering the bottom of the seventh, junior Beckett Delleo reached on a pinch-hit single and a pair of one-out walks for Jack O’Neil and Jake Lonardo loaded the bases for junior Nolan Rappoli. He fouled off a 0-2 pitch and the next pitch hit him for the walk off victory for Xaverian (14-3, 8-2).
“I just wanted to shorten up and put the ball into play,” Rappoli said about his approach at the dish. “Be as smooth as possible. Just not trying to do too much and I got a blessing. The pitcher up there – he was great. He was commanding the zone and I was fortunate enough to do the job.”
To start things off, St. John’s (15-3, 6-3) put together a solid first inning with three hits, three walks and a hit batter against Hawks’ starter Paul McCarthy to go up 4-0 with key RBI singles for Conor Secrist and Aiden LeBel.
In the second, senior Andrew Schmit led off the inning with a triple and scored on a passed ball.
Xaverian responded in the bottom of the second as they ripped five straight hits with one down with six in total to go up 6-5 after two. Will Curley from the nine hole was the first RBI single before Jackson Morse’s two-strike single to right-center made it a 5-2 hole to score Jack Coen. O’Neil then laced a two-run single to make it 5-4 that was followed by a Lonardo RBI single to knot the score 5-5. Four batters later, Quinn Lanagan was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to make it 6-5 Hawks after two.
“I was so impressed with our club at the bottom of the second,” Lambert said about his team’s ability to rally. “We just strung a bunch of hits together and just go. Sort of climbed all the way back into the game and from then on, it’s just a war.”
From there, McCarthy retired nine of the final 11 batters he faced and went five full with seven strikeouts after throwing 32 pitches in the first frame.
Xaverian added three more runs in the bottom of the fifth as Morse drove in two with a single and O’Neil drove him in with a double to right-center to push the lead out to 9-5.
St. John’s did not go quietly and quickly put runners on first and second with nobody out after McCarthy came out of the contest on a pair of hit by pitches. A Jack Forgues one-out ground-rule double to center made it a 9-6 and a hard-hit ball for Parker Higgins that got through the Hawk’s third baseman made it 9-8 before an error at third with two down tied it up 9-9 with Owen Miller at bat before Abe Anderson finally got the final out of the sixth.
“Honestly, I think we are pretty strong mentally,” said Morse about the team’s mentality after giving up the 9-5 advantage. “Our coach has this saying ‘So what, next pitch’ and we kind of carry that into the field and in the batter’s box.”
Anderson also came out for the seventh and struck out a pair in a 1-2-3 frame to keep the score tied going into the home-half.
