PRINCETON \u2014 Closer and closer the Allentown American Legion team is getting to winning its fourth Mercer County American Legion League title in the last six summers.<\/p>\n
This season, it is all about focus because the wins have not always been easy, even if manager Sahil Thakur\u2019s squad has the ability to make games appear that way.<\/p>\n
A\u2019town saw exactly how much other teams in the league would like to join it in districts when it visited Princeton Post 218 Monday at Barbara Smoyer Park.<\/p>\n
First-year manager Judd Petrone Jr.\u2019s Post 218 club has improved enough to give Allentown a run for its money in Princeton\u2019s final home game.<\/p>\n
After jumping into the lead in the top of the first, A\u2019town saw Post 218 rally to take the lead. Even though Allentown began to pull away, Princeton never let the game get out of hand before succumbing, 8-5.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve improved a lot this year,\u201d Post 218\u2019s Casey Daigneault said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been more in tune. A lot of times, we still get a little nervous. We want to get to the point where we make the other guys be nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daigneault, who will be a senior at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in the fall, did what he could to keep his growing team in the contest last night with two hits and three runs batted in.<\/p>\n
But A\u2019town (12-2) had consecutive sluggers near the top of its lineup in Nolan Arnold and Dan Golembiewski. Both had three hits, two runs scored and a double. Arnold drove in three runs, while Golembiewski knocked in two, along with teammate Matt Vetrano.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m playing with a lot of good kids who are going to play baseball in college,\u201d said Arnold, a 6-foot-3 New Egypt High grad headed to Iona University, where the Gaels want him to join their pitching staff. \u201cI saw the ball pretty well today. But, with this team, if I don\u2019t get the hit, you know the guy behind you will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnold was having a perfect night before popping out in the seventh inning. After getting hit by a pitch and stealing a base on the way to scoring his team\u2019s first run, Arnold doubled in Nick Carmino in the second, then singled in Carmino in the third and fifth innings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like this team is always coming on,\u201d said Arnold, whose club has four regular-season games remaining. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to lock up the league title, then win districts and move on to states, which we didn\u2019t do last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Princeton (5-12) currently needs a win in its last game at Hamilton Post 31 Thursday to at least have a shot at advancing to district play. But that has not dimmed Daigneault\u2019s opinion of his improved squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, this summer\u2019s been about exposure and having fun,\u201d the 17-year-old of French Canadian descent said. \u201cI\u2019ve been hanging with my friends and enjoying baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
A postseason berth would make that even more enjoyable.<\/p>\n
Allentown (12-2)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0231\u00a0 \u00a0 020\u00a0 \u00a0 0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 \u00a0 8\u00a0 10\u00a0 2<\/p>\n
Princeton (5-12)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0300\u00a0 \u00a0 002\u00a0 \u00a0 0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 \u00a0 5\u00a0 \u00a0 8\u00a0 2<\/p>\n
2B: Arnold, Golembiewski (A), Bellace (P); RBIs: Arnold 3, Golembiewski 2, Kish, MVetrano 2 (A), Daigneault 3, Nydick (P).<\/p>\n
WP \u2014 Martin (1-0); LP \u2014 Brophy (3-3).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PRINCETON \u2014 Closer and closer the Allentown American Legion team is getting to winning its fourth Mercer County…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,18736,305,28517,9520,915,28,726,10356],"class_list":["post-243025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-burlington-county","tag-high-school-sports","tag-hunterdon-county","tag-mercer-county","tag-new-jersey","tag-pennsylvania","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-trt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}