The 92nd Greater Newark Tournament for baseball fans and the Essex County Tournament for followers of softball each seeded their respective events Monday night with committees of coaches meeting with tourney directors at James Caldwell High School.
To no one’s surprise Seton Hall Prep is the top seed in the GNT followed by 2-Livingston, 3-West Essex, 4-Millburn, 5-Verona, 6-Columbia, 7-Montclair Kimberley Academy and 8-Caldwell in a 22-team field.
Cedar Grove, with two victories so far in the regular season over perennial rival and 2024 ECT champion Mount St. Dominic, is the No. 1 seed in softball followed by 2-Columbia, 3-The Mount, 4-Livingston, 5-Caldwell, 6-West Essex, 7-Montclair and 8-Verona in a 21-team event.
The GNT schedule (see bracket below) begins Wednesday (April 30) with the preliminary round followed by the first round on Friday (May 2) and quarterfinals (Wednesday, May 11) all at the higher-seeded team’s field.
The GNT semis are slated for 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., Saturday, May 10, at SHP’s Porcello Field followed by the championship game, noon, Saturday, May 17, at Verona’s Doc Goeltz Field.
In ECT softball (see bracket below) preliminary round games are also scheduled for Wednesday, April 30, followed by the first round on Saturday, May 3, and the quarterfinals, Saturday, May 10, all at the higher seed.
As has been the tradition the past several seasons, the semifinals (5 p.m. and 7 p.m., Friday, May 16) and the final (7 p.m., Saturday, May 17) are at Ivy Hill Park in Newark.
As is always the case in baseball, pitching matchups and a hurler throwing his best on a particular day will determine so much as to if anyone can knock off SHP, which has pitching depth led by its three starters: major league prospect Marcelo Harsch, and other hard-throwers JJ Drennan and Patrick Cassells.
Second-seeded Livingston is led by its solid trio of pitchers in Max Peri, Tyler Chen and Adam Goldberg.
On the softball side, Cedar Grove has 4-year starter Cayce Kavakich who has more than 1,000 career strikeouts and is a superb hitter as well, while Columbia is led by its ace Claire Shupe, while the Mount is looking for last year’s top hurler Ava Kelshaw to continue to round into form after missing much of the first half of the season as she completes her recovery from a back ailment. Freshman Abby Cianfrocca, another terrific hitter, has filled in admirably in the circle for the Lions in Kelshaw’s absence.
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