Through the first 3 innings, Westfield had #9 in the state, Governor Livingston, at an even tie. With each team already at five runs apiece, this game was a shootout from the beginning. The Blue Devils entered the fourth inning with a sense of control. This once oscillating lead was to be taken care of, the Blue Devils would command the victory starting here, in the bottom of the fourth.
Led by senior captain Tomas Cestero, the Blue Devils rallied quickly. With the bases loaded, senior Randy Davis is walked, sending home the run for the lead. Westfield was up, 6-5, with no outs. They closed out the inning up, 9-5, changing the momentum of the game. From there, Governor Livingston struggled to get anything going offensively.
Juniors Jake Alfano and Brady Trajkovski, in addition to being a pair of big hitters, going two and three in the batting order, were brief with their comments following the game. Alfano, speaking on their big hits, noted that “it’s just that fight back mentality.” Trajkovski added, “I’m with him on that, you go in there and you just gotta kill…our mentality going into this game was to [outplay them] and the score speak for itself.”
The last two and a half innings went by quickly with Westfield managing to tack on three more and secure a 12-5 victory against one of their biggest county rivals at the moment.
Following the electric win, the Blue Devils were very proud, to say the least, of their huge win. Labin reflected on the high tensions of the game, saying; “GL is a really good team, we did a great job. I didn’t even realize it was 12-5 until it was the last inning. We had energy from the start and we kept it going every inning.” His four at-bats culled a very productive 2-3 with two singles and a walk along, with a batch of athletic and key plays on defense.
Westfield is happy with their success, but head coach Jay Cook says, “It is definitely, along with Cranford, one of the higher points of our season so far, but it’s something we’re gonna enjoy for the rest of the day and then we got Bernards.” He added, “We had one blip [a loss to Summit] and the eight games before that we played extremely well, so you take the sample size and say that we are more the eight than we are the one loss…the good thing about baseball is that you get a lot of opportunities each week.”
Cestero notched eight strikeouts in the win, including five straight to all but seal GL’s fate. Cestero said that GL is Westfield’s “biggest rival” and that a battle between the “top two teams in county and both top 15 in the state [was a] huge game for us. We definitely don’t like each other, but coming out here getting a win sets the tone for the rest of the week and month going into May for the playoffs.”
Westfield also added a 5-1 victory the next day against Bernards, putting them at 11-1 on the year. The Blue Devils look to take this momentum forward at Edison Intermediate School on April 29 against Millburn at 4 p.m..
