A lot of people like to bring attention to themselves by boasting about who they know. In fact, I had a kid brag to me the other day that he went to school with Steven Matz.
Kyle Strovink is not one of those people. It might be easy to expect things handed to you when your uncle was a 10-year veteran in the big leagues; Keith Osik and your father played minor league ball.
The senior from Rocky Point doesn’t walk around with that type of entitlement.
Rather, he lets his play and work ethic do the talking. After his junior season in which he hit four HRs, he then signed his letter of intent to play at Div-I Lamar University in Texas.
The Lamar opportunity came about because Pat Shortt of the MLB Scouting Bureau recommended my brother and I to the head coach Jim Gilligan. Coach Gilligan then came up to New York and saw my brother play at the Area Code tryouts. A year later he came back to see me play. It was an easy decision to commit to Lamar, Coach Gilligan is a legend with over 1,300 wins and since my brother had already decided to go there it seemed like the perfect fit. Also, I got to know Coach Hatten and RickIeson, the assistant coaches and really liked the way they interact with the players. I feel extremely grateful to have had Mr. Shortt recommend me to Lamar.
His brother, Brennan, had a stellar high school career as well. He led Suffolk County in home runs in 2014 and was first-team All-State. Kyle noted that he is the “best example of how to work hard to get better.”
He also named fellow Rocky Point grad Frankie Moscatiello and ’13 Carl Yastrzemski Award winner Matt Crohan as players that have helped me get to where he is today.
This summer, Strovink played with the Long Island Titans. The well-renowned travel organization has a bevy of elite players from across the island. You can often locate who’s on this team by noticing the #BATsquad in the their Twitter bios.
“First off they are some of the funniest guys you could know so it was great spending all that time together,” he said. “We’ve become extremely close through all the traveling together and competing all across the east coast. Talent wise those guys are the best. Everyday I was shocked at some of the incredible things my teammates were doing,” he added.
Strovink was never shocked at his own results. If anything, he feels he has some growing to do.
“I’m never really satisfied with how I’ve played. I look back and wish I could have done some things better and try to work on those things for next season. My goals for 2016 are to keep improving every day and for my school team to make a run in the playoffs,” he added.
He has one more year to add to the family’s legacy at Rocky Point before moving on to college, where he can hopefully follow in his father and uncle’s footsteps of playing pro ball.
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