Quick trivia question: Who’s the last Nassau County Class AA team – not named Massapequa – to capture a title?
That’s right, East Meadow Jets captured the 2016 Nassau County championship before losing to West Islip in Long Island Championship. Head coach John Marciante said they “emptied the tank against Massapequa. We basically had a five-man pitching staff, or maybe even four-and-a-half.”
Marciante is East Meadow through-and-through. He captured a County Championship as a player in 1991. He has been on the coaching staff since 1998 and head coach since 2015. He immediately took the program to the height of success in his second season. Since then, they have been successful but unable to reach the mountain top.
In 2019, they had a great season. They went 18-5 but ran out of gas in the semifinals losing 5-4 and 8-4 in the best-of-three series. That team was exceptionally talented. They were led by two-time Diamond Award finalist Charlie Cucchiara who went 8-2 during his senior season. He was an All-Long Island selection in 2019. They also had another All-County RHP in Sean Kennedy who is at Mount St. Vincent. Catcher Dylan Pohl was All-Conference and is at SUNY Cobleskill. Tyler Patterson was an All-Conference RF and is at Dominican College and INF Daniel Molina was All-Conference and he is at Farmingdale State.
FINAL: East Meadow 3 Port Washington 2
WP: Sean Kennedy (CG)
Rob Wakely: Go-ahead RBI pic.twitter.com/xMY6uuaHZT— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) April 25, 2019
Kennedy and Pohl both graduated last season – as did RHP Sean Brody – so they would’ve been in decent shape last year as far as returners go. This season, Marciante admitted the team is young and inexperienced – they are returning just one player.
That player is SS Anthony Gentile who was an All-League player for them in 2019. Marciante stated that he has gotten stronger and improved offensively since that time, and defensively he remains excellent and also has great speed so he will bat at the top of the order.
“He wrestled at 165 lbs this past winter and he looks like a completely different person than two years ago,” he said.
Aside from him, all the other spots are up for grabs. Marciante noted that fortunately the team has been able to throw bullpens for the past couple of months. They’ve been working outside for the past couple weeks at town fields since their outfield is used by the soccer team.
Last summer, he was able to keep tabs on his players during their summer seasons.
“Social media has been great for us,” he said. He added that he “used quarantine to reactivate Instagram and posted videos of our players getting their work in.” He caught some local travel games during the summer to monitor the progress of his guys as well.
This year they will have the challenge of facing some teams the program has never faced such as Garden City and New Hyde Park. “We have no idea what to expect from them since we’ve never seen them,” said Marciante, although the same can be said from the perspective of those teams. They will also face MacArthur, Mephem, Long Beach, Herricks, Calhoun and Great Neck South – the latter which they will open up against on May 4.
