by Joseph Langan
Amassing a 49-19-2 record over the past four seasons, MacArthur High School has been one of the most dominant regular season teams. In fact, they’ve been one of the baseball powerhouses on Long Island over the past 25 years.
They moved to the Nassau Class A in 2017 after competing with the large schools prior to that. While the Generals have been one of the best teams on Long Island – always finding themselves in the playoffs, they’ve struggled to find their way back to that championship series since 2015. They made the county finals each year from 2006-2008 and then each year from 2010-2013.
Coach Steve Costello and his Generals made a great push last season for the championship, making it all the way to the Class-A semifinals. In a hard fought, back and forth series MacArthur came up short to the Clarke High School Rams, the eventual winners of Class-A. Although Coach Costello takes pride in his team being competitive year after year he realizes things need to be improved after their semifinal loss, “we need to play better defense and improve our hitting with men on base.”
Coach Costello and his assistants strive to put the Generals above the rest of the competition every season with innovative training regimens.
“We are not teaching the same things we taught 20 years ago. We stay on top of the latest information on training and skills development. We are constantly trying to learn, I like the saying, “If you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room.””
Some of these plans include an intensive pitching program that is tailored to fit the specifications for each pitcher from season to season. As for hitters Coach Costello has implemented a program called Occlusion, a system that allows hitters to recognize pitches. As more new talent continues to pour into MacArthur, these new systems will certainly help put them above the rest.
MacArthur will go into the 2020 season with a roster similar to last year’s semifinal team. The two biggest holes come from the graduation of All-League outfielder Justin DeMaria and starting pitcher Chris Roach, both leaving behind significant shoes to fill. While both are big losses to the program, Coach Costello is confident in his returners along with the sophomore class to fill the void this season.
This year the Generals are expected to be led by their ace JT Raab, last season as a sophomore Raab received All-County honors and won a crucial game one against Clarke last season in the playoffs. Expecting to lead the offensive charge this season is All-County first baseman Sean Tierney, senior catcher Dom Notarstefano (Anderson University), and two-way player Jim Mahoney (Queens College).
With an experienced group of returners along with young talented players from the JV squad puts MacArthur in a great situation going into 2020. Coach Costello always expects to win a championship but understands that baseball is much bigger than that. “Our kids know it is not the end of the world to lose a game or to fall short of a goal. As coaches we can’t get angry if we fall short of our goal. We have to stress the process of working hard and not expecting everything to go our way.” With a talented team and a devoted coach, MacArthur seems like they could make a big splash in 2020 and finally return back to the championship for the first time since 2015, when they defeated Oceanside to capture the crown.
They also have had remarkable success winning the Diamond Award, as they’ve produced five in the past 11 seasons – most recently Brandon Buchan in 2018.
