By Andy Loigu

Play ball!

Despite the chilly weather in the rarefied climate of Blairstown, the Warren Hills Blue Streaks and Blair Academy Buccaneers were like good postal carriers and delivered the goods anyway. The Streaks got the new baseball season off to a good start with a 7-3 win on a blustery Monday afternoon.

You can’t win them all if you don’t win the first one.

The key to winning is putting it together and Warren Hills did just that, scoring seven runs on seven timely hits. Garrett Koch pitched a complete-game gem, only allowing two hits and no walks while striking out five batters.

Ryan Bell rang with a bang at the plate, clanging a home run and two runs batted in. Kevin Laferla, Jake Smith, and Koch combined for three hits and three runs batted in.

The Streaks qualified for the state tournament last spring, but were eliminated 9-3 at Somerville. They hope to get back for another shot at the sectional crown this year.

In a softball opener on Monday, a home run by Carly Curcio kept the Hackettstown Tigers from getting shutout at Morris Tech in an otherwise dismal 8-1 defeat. Lena Lutcza was 2-for-3 for the Tigers, including a double.

Last year the Tigers were a state qualifier, eliminated at Parsippany in an exciting but disappointing 7-5 game.

As the proponents of the conventional wisdom always say, keep your head up and go get them next time. 

Baseball and softball are sports in which both the experiences of exaltation and humility are plentiful. It takes several games to start evaluation of how a season is going. Anything can happen in any given game. The critics should be taciturn at this time and withhold their judgement at least until the weather gets warm.

***************Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.