Michael Milano is entering his 17th season as head coach of Seaford and he’s excited to watch his team play baseball again, but it’s what did not happen last year that still bothers him.
“A lot of guys have emptiness in their hearts about last year,” he said in regards to losing out on the 2020 season. “We really invested a lot in those guys, we took our lumps with them and we were going to be very tough to beat,” he added. Milano noted that he had 15 seniors in the ’20 class. Of those, seven were everyday players and his top two starters, Frank Cozzolino and Chris Pupa were co-aces since their sophomore seasons. They were both All-County pitchers in 2019 and their catcher, Nick Barreiros, was a standout player that is now at Queens College.
“Frank and Pupa were our main guys for two straight years. We had Joe Cain coming back at 1st base. So the heartbreak was real,” he added.
Milano said in honor of those 15 seniors, they will hold a joint Senior Day on June before their final home game against Locust Valley.
In 2019, the Vikings had a great season winning 14 games – including two playoff games but had their season cut short by a very good Division team. Fortunately, they still have to starters from that team and they are SS Anthony Ippoliti and 1B/OF Tom Hartmann. Milano said Ippoliti led off and played SS in 2019 and will do the same this year. He may also contribute on the mound since they graduated 95 percent of their innings last year. Hartmann will play first base, outfield and pitch. He added that they are both uncommitted, but speaking to colleges now. “They are both college baseball players – it’s just whether they will walk on or get a guaranteed roster spot.” He added that Covid impacted players like them or would’ve been committed by now. The same could be said for many of his 2020 graduates.
“You never know what would’ve happened if those kids had a senior season,” he said.
They also have two seniors that made the team last year – Mike Fader and Mike Scimeca who looked really good over the three practices last year and would’ve challenged the seniors for starting jobs.
Despite the obvious downsides of the cancelled season, he noted that the program is actually in good shape. They just added a second middle school team and they have a very strong JV program led by a former Seaford player, Eric Corsini.
“I would take our JV program over anyone,” he said, noting the great job that Corsini has done building the program.
One of the inherent challenges for Seaford’s baseball program is the enrollment of the school. They have 500 students which puts them right at the threshold to be in the ‘A’ classification. He stated that the next smallest school is Clarke at 550. So they are one student away from being a B/C classification against far inferior opponents. The fact that Seaford and Clarke have remained competitive despite the large disparity in enrollment is very impressive.
Seaford will have their full team back for workouts this week after the soccer and football teams had their seasons end this past weekend.
“We are excited about the influx of athletes from the fall sports, we are getting after it,” Milano said.
They won’t have the luxury of playing scrimmages, but he noted that they will aim to simulate game conditions during practices over the next week and he said “I’ve always said the players make the lineups, we are trying to enable them to allow their performance to do that.”
With 12 juniors on the roster, it’s not a stretch to say Seaford will be very competitive over the next two years.
