Final: Southampton 9, Babylon 8
Here’s the go-ahead home run by Andrew Smith (3-for-3, 2 HR) pic.twitter.com/4oyXqgo5sK
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) July 12, 2020
Zach Epley was set to begin his varsity head coaching career with Southampton last year before the shutdown. There will be the added challenge this season of facing a step up in competition as their league consists of Shoreham-Wading River, Center Moriches and Mount Sinai.
Regardless, pitching and defense has always been the recipe to success in baseball and Epley in confident in theirs.
“I think we really have a good 1-2 punch atop the rotation with Ethan Walker and Steven Kraszewski,” said Epley. Those two were slated to be in the rotation last year along with LHP Sam Schneider, who graduated in 2020. Additionally, they have catcher Paul Guillo, whom Epley is confident in as well. All three of those players are third-year varsity players with experience from 2019.
“We are going to go as far as those three can take us,” he said.
They will have to fill out the rotation with two other starters, one of those may be Tommy Kreymborg, who has “been throwing strikes so far in our workouts,” but he noted that it doesn’t necessarily translate into the season.
They are also confident in their defense.
“Our fielding will not be a problem, we are solid in the field but the pitching depth will be tested and once we get past our top five guys in the order it’s going to be up to the bottom four to turn the lineup over,” he added.
Fortunately, they were able to get into the Baseball Heaven Spring League and register for two Town of Brookhaven tournaments “so we should be able to get 12-15 games in before the season,” to figure everything out.
One of their goals during those games will be “how the younger kids hit in those tournaments, that will dictate a lot for us,” in terms of setting up the lineup for the regular season.
Epley stated that one of the advantages of being a smaller school is developing a chemistry among the players. Some of the larger schools haven’t been able to have team workouts and the players and coaching staff may be unfamiliar with each other. That is not an issue for them.
“The sophomores are comfortable with the juniors and seniors, the chemistry is good,” he added.
They will go to battle on May 7 against Babylon at Eastport-South Manor Complex at 8pm under the lights. They will look to restore the glory days of last decade when they captured back-to-back Long Island Championships.
