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Continue reading Ridgewood High School Sports Ends the Year on Championship Note!
JULY 26, 2015, 11:26 PM LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, JULY 27, 2015, 7:57 AM
BY TARA SULLIVAN
RECORD COLUMNIST |
THE RECORD
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The message was tucked deep inside a long and personal Hall of Fame acceptance speech, important words of warning amid heartfelt words of gratitude.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz was one of four players inducted Sunday
John Smoltz touched all the emotional bases Sunday afternoon in Cooperstown, N.Y., thanking everyone from family and friends to former teammates and coaches for helping him realize baseball’s career pinnacle. But it was when he turned his attention to a long-ago major league pitcher and a host of doctors and trainers that Smoltz’s moment of personal achievement morphed into one of public service.
With an impassioned plea to parents across America to protect the arms of their budding baseball stars, Smoltz gave an important big-league voice to an issue that threatens the future of our long-standing national pastime.
As the first pitcher in the Hall of Fame who had Tommy John surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing arm, Smoltz spoke from a perch of experience. Though filled with gratitude and appreciation for the career-saving procedure pioneered by noted orthopedist Dr. Frank Jobe and famously performed on onetime Yankee pitcher Tommy John, Smoltz is part of the growing chorus of baseball fans alarmed by the increase in Tommy John procedures, particularly among young athletes.
“It’s an epidemic, it’s something that’s affecting our game,” Smoltz said. “It’s something that I thought would cost me my career, but thanks to Dr. James Andrews and all those before him performing the surgery with such precision, it has caused it to be almost a false read, like a Band-Aid you put on your arm.
“I want to encourage families and parents that are out there to understand that is not normal to have a surgery at 14 or 15 years old, [that] you have time, that baseball is not a year-round sport, that you have an opportunity to be athletic and play other sports. Don’t let the institutions that are out there running before you, guaranteeing scholarship dollars and signing bonuses, [tell you] that this is the way.
“We have such great, dynamic arms in our game, and it’s a shame we are having one and two and three Tommy John recipients.”
April 3, 2015 Last updated: Friday, April 3, 2015, 12:31 AM
By Matthew Birchenough
ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR |
The Ridgewood News
RIDGEWOOD — Its roster might look different, but the Ridgewood High School baseball team entered the opening week of the season with a familiar feeling.
The program said goodbye to the 16 seniors that led the team to 16 wins in 2014, but it welcomes back a solid core of varsity contributors as well as a promising group of players from last season’s successful JV and freshman teams, which led to renewed optimism as the Maroons got underway this week.
“Our expectations are still thinking we’re going to be a team that can get into the state playoffs and hopefully the counties, and that’s still part of our mindset,” RHS head coach Kurt Hommen said Sunday night from Vero Beach, Fla., where the Maroons enjoyed a few days of preseason training in sunny weather.
Ridgewood is coming off a solid 16-10 campaign, which included a trip to the North 1, Group 4 semifinals and a near upset of top-seeded Bergen Catholic in the county tournament.
H.S. baseball: Snow putting season on ice
APRIL 3, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2015, 12:30 AM
BY MARK J. CZERWINSKI
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Westwood baseball coach Kris Izzo was hard at work building up his pitcher’s mound over the weekend, celebrating the Cardinals’ first day out on their own field this preseason. All of a sudden, he heard a noise that is usually so out of place on a baseball field.
Especially four days before opening day.
“I hear this crunch of snow,” Izzo said. “So strange. I look up, and our kids are walking in and out of the dugout through snow.”
The Cardinals were lucky. They may have some snow lingering by the dugout and behind home plate, but at least the rest of the field is clear and playable.
That puts them well ahead of a few North Jersey teams who are still waiting for some sort of thaw to set in even with Thursday’s seasonable weather. And almost everyone endured a preseason that kept them inside and off their frozen fields, setting back their preparation.
“In my 30 years as an educator, this is the worst I remember,” Demarest athletic director Greg Butler said. “We’ve had other bad Marches, but not like this. This is the worst, not because of the snow, but because it’s been so cold along with the snow.”
That’s why you have fields like the one at St. Joseph. It’s always a little colder up on that hill in Montvale, and the parts of the field along the third base line that are shielded by trees – a blessing on sunny days in the late spring – had so much snow remaining that the Green Knights had to move Thursday’s opener to Morris Catholic.
And the drains in the dugouts are frozen and layered with ice.
In Mahwah, the field was covered by a coating of snow Wednesday morning, just hours before the Thunderbirds’ first game.
Up in West Milford, where winter always seems to linger a bit longer, weekend pictures of the Highlanders’ field look like a Christmas card scene. Half the field is covered in snow, and Wednesday’s opener was moved to Wayne Valley.
“We’ve played two scrimmages on turf, but we haven’t practiced outside except for fungoes in the parking lot,” said West Milford coach Joe Jordan.
“It’s funny because the school district had drainage put in over the summer. It worked really well in the fall, but a new drainage system doesn’t make a difference when the ground is frozen and there’s nothing to drain.”
Some lucky teams such as Demarest, Ridgewood and Don Bosco were able to head off to places such as Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Florida to squeeze in some workouts and scrimmages.
https://www.northjersey.com/sports/h-s-baseball-snow-putting-season-on-ice-1.1301951?page=all
Tyler Welence, a 2011 Ridgewood High School graduate, has made a seamless transition on the diamond at McGill University in Montreal, helping the school to the Canadian Collegiate Baseball Association tournament title last fall.
Former Ridgewood Baseball star excels north of the border
March 20, 2015 Last updated: Friday, March 20, 2015, 12:31 AM
By Matthew Birchenough
ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR |
The Ridgewood News
The past four years have taken Ridgewood native Tyler Welence throughout the western hemisphere, but no matter where he’s gone, he has always been playing baseball.
The 2011 Ridgewood High School graduate made his latest mark on the diamond last fall playing shortstop for McGill University in Montreal, which won the Canadian Collegiate Baseball Association National Championship.
“This was the first time I was ever part of a team that ended up winning the highest honor possible, and the feeling was so foreign to me after we won, the sense of accomplishment didn’t set in for a few hours,” Welence said earlier this week.
For his performance during the Redmen’s run, Welence earned the tournament MVP.
“Honestly, I always just try my best to help the team win, whatever that means doing,” he said. “I was very happy I was able to play a role in getting our team the title, but it was truly a full team effort.”
Welence exhibited the same sort of team-first attitude in his years at RHS.
