BY DOUG McKENZIE
Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY CHRIS KELLY staff Above, Rumson’s John Lembeck fires a pitch to the plate during a junior Legion game in Middletown on Friday. At left, Rumson’s Kyle Heath avoids a sliding Middletown North player. The Rumson-Fair Haven Bulldogs Junior American Legion team is just 2-7 in the early going, but head coach Bill Miller is not the least bit discouraged.

“Basically, all of our losses have come to Group IV, what you’d consider A division teams like CBA [Christian Brothers Academy], Middletown North, Ocean and Howell,” Miller said. “And we’ve hung in there with those teams, losing 7-4 to Middletown and 8-3 to CBA. We’ve been able to hold our own against them and win the games against schools our size or smaller.”

The Bulldogs had Monday’s game with Shore rained out, but will be back in action tomorrow when they take on Manasquan.

But in truth, the wins and losses are not what Miller and senior Legion coach Kevin James (also the coach of the Rumson-Fair Haven High School team) are most concerned with, especially not at the junior Legion level.

“Different Legion teams treat the season differently,” Miller said. “At Rumson-Fair Haven, we get all the players as much playing time as possible, and try to give them all equal exposure and experience. Coach James holds practices at the high school, where we’re trying to provide a training and improvement period. We work on skills, and help the kids get better at various aspects of the game.”

In other words, James and Miller are looking at the big picture during the summer.

“It’s less about winning the league and more about developing the players,” Miller said. “At the junior level, I make sure every kid gets equal playing time, and we pitch as many kids as possible who want to be pitchers.

“We use the junior Legion to help build the program,” he added. “In the past, we’ve had to reach down to the eighth-grade level to recruit most of our junior Legion players, but we’ve started to build the program back up, and this year we only have four eighth-graders on the team.”

And both James and Miller have seen positive results over the past two years.

“Over the past two seasons that we’ve had junior Legion teams, they’ve had summers where they went 1-15 and 2-16, yet our freshman and JV teams are having records just the opposite,” Miller said.

Apparently, their Legion philosophy is paying dividends.

This year’s junior Legion team includes 14 players who will be sophomores in the fall, and the four aforementioned freshmen-to-be.

“Those four guys — Dan Ryan, Kevin Marinko, Kevin Graf and Taylor Brown — are really stepping up and contributing for us,” Miller said.

Most of the pitching has been done by the quartet of John Lembeck, Clark Langille, Mark Siebeo and Kyle Heath, while Patrick McDevitt and Tommy McDonough will see plenty of time on the hill as well this summer.

“They’re all doing rather well considering they’re facing some tough, older competition,” Miller said.

The top hitters so far have been Sam Sherman, Ted Mimnaugh, Joe Liberi, Ryan Kirschner and Jeff Folker, while Dan Miles, Graham Robertson and Kevin Welsh have also contributed, according to the coach.