Last summer, most of the young men returning to their high school baseball squads for 2020-21 received an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. After all, the spring season had been rendered useless by the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the Barnegat and Southern Regional teams met in an opening round clash of locals, the game went down to the wire. Barnegat managed to score a pair of runs in the bottom of the fifth to win a 3-2 decision.