Original: May 10, 2011 Issue 16
By: Mike Hayes and Whitney DeValRoger
Staff Writers
Germantown baseball ends impressive season.
Germantown Baseball to play for Region and district Championship
The Montgomery College Germantown Gryphons played in the Regional and District Championship Tournament on Friday, May 6.
The winner of the tournament will be the Region 20 and District D champions and earn a berth in the Division III World Series. The team has so far met the high expectations that were set at the start of the season when they were ranked fifth nationally by the NJCAA Baseball Coaches association.
The Gryphons have had an extremely productive regular season with a 29-19 record including three separate four-game winning streaks and a five-game streak towards the end of April. During these winning streaks, the team had victories over two nationally ranked teams; number four Riverland Community College and number ten Herkimer Community College in New York.
The team’s numerous winning streaks are impressive enough as they also avoided a rough patch during the season and never lost more than two games in a row. The team’s four-game tear in mid-March was arguably the most intense part of the Gryphon’s season.
Each game was won by Montgomery College in walk-off fashion and the first two victories were against the aforementioned top ranked team from New York.
Of the 22 teams in Region 20, the Gryphons seem to be the strongest heading into the tournament. They are the only team from Maryland that was nationally ranked before the start of the season, and considering how well they have lived up to the expectations, a regional championship is far from a pipe dream.
Unfortunately, the Germantown Gryphons fell short on game day. The District D Championship title went to the challenger, the Westmoreland County Community College Wolfpack. Germantown was defeated on their home field 6-3.
Though they lost the District D title, the success of the baseball team is an enormous win for the Germantown campus. Baseball is the only spring sport in which Germantown participates and the fact that the team made it all the way to the District Championship Tournament is a victory in itself.
