After defeating Bayport-Blue Point in the Class A Long Island Championship last season, the Blue Dragons of Division HS will enter the 2016 season with the target on their backs again.
Under Head Coach Tom Tuttle, who is now in his ninth year, the program has won four County Championships and two Long Island Championships. They are clearly one of the perennial powerhouses on the island.
This season, however, they will have to go to battle without virtually all of their key cogs from last season’s title run.
“We had five or six guys that were three-year starters,” said Tuttle. “We had a ton of experience,” he added.
They were fortunate to have a three-man rotation of James Varela, Anthony Papa and Kieran McLaughin that all signed to play college baseball. The former two are at LIU Post (Papa is recovering from Tommy John Surgery in November), while McLaughlin is at Adelphi. They also had a No. 4 starter who happened to go 8-0, named All-County and won the clinching game to advance the Blue Dragons to the county championship in Brandon O’Brien.
“He was a pleasant surprise last year,” said Tuttle. With the graduation of the top three arms, he will be counted on to anchor the rotation. The remaining two spots are yet to be decided and Tuttle noted that “five or six guys are in the mix for that”. It will be decided this week during their scrimmages and non-league games.
They also graduated All-County third baseman Tyler Epple, who signed to play at Concordia and has compiled a solid .382 OBP through 14 games.
Fortunately, they are Division and the talent pool never runs dry in the district.
They will be counting on All-County infielder Ronmel Ocampo, who led the team in HR and RBI last year. Tuttle noted that he will be their biggest impact bat this season.
They will also be counting on catcher Sean Cook to provide pop in the middle of the order.
The rest of the roster will be battling it out to determine starting roles. They open up next Monday officially against New Hyde Park.
They will be relying heavily on last year’s JV team that went 17-2 and was a couple innings away from being undefeated–which of course bodes well for the future of the program.
When it comes to Division–would you expect anything less?
