Final: West Islip 5, North Babylon 4 (13 Innings)
WP: Brad Battaglini (5 IP, 1 R)Mike LaDonna: Wall-off sac fly pic.twitter.com/ogXGg6gd4Q
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) April 24, 2019
Over the course of his tenure, Shawn Rush has established West Islip as the model of consistency in terms of Suffolk County baseball programs. Since 2008, they have captured four Suffolk County Championships and two Long Island Championships.
They won Suffolk Class AA Championships in 2014, 2016 and 2018. They were looking to continue their “even year” trend last year and appeared to have a decent shot at it with a starting rotation consisting of three college-bound seniors – Bobby DiCapua (Bentley), Brad Battaglini (Cortland) and Brian Lundie (Farmingdale). That alone would’ve given them a shot at the title. With the cancellation, they graduated them as well as outfielder Joe Saccente. They routinely send players to college, you can find their alumni all over college rosters in the northeast. They also have two 2019 graduates, Anthony Cinquemani and Mike Badala contributing at St. Joseph’s.
Entering 2021, Shawn Rush is returning zero players with varsity experience and that includes pitchers or position players. Additionally, he noted that they lost “probably our best all-around player” Bobby Marsh to a football injury during the first week of the season. Marsh is a 6’4 185 lb wide receiver that also starred for the basketball team. Rush noted that he probably would’ve been their starting CF last season and batted in the heart of the lineup. Rather, he is forced to miss his junior and senior seasons, which Rush called “very disappointing but he can probably still play college baseball.”
Another obstacle for West Islip is that most of their players are multi-sport athletes. With the Spring I season still going, they have several players that either play soccer, football or volleyball. Their football team is competing in the County Finals this Saturday against Bellport.
Rush stated that yesterday was their first full team workout. Previously, they have only been able to get their pitchers & catchers together.
They will have 30 kids trying out for the team with 16 of them seniors, so at least the group will be senior-laden. They did get some experience at this level for last year’s Town of Brookhaven Varsity Wood Bat Tournament – which is a positive because Rush noted he played mostly juniors to get them the in-game experience.
RHP Matt Gordon performed well and he recently committed to the College of St. Rose which plays in the NE-10 Conference. Rush stated that “He throws strikes and I’ve always said, if you can throw strikes you can pitch for us. If you can command, you’ll pitch.” He added that they have about three or four seniors that he thinks will be effective.
Another committed player that they have is Matt Marmo, who will be attending Belmont-Abbey in North Carolina.
They will be opening up against Eastport-South Manor, which means they will probably face their ace Jake Deslauriers. Rush said he is most interested in seeing how coaches choose to deploy their pitchers.
“The way it sets up – it’ll be interesting to see how teams set up their pitching. I’m sure everyone will be following Axcess and Newsday to see who pitched the day before,” he added.
