I mean, you couldn’t have asked for anything more on Opening Day for Section XI baseball. Town of Brookhaven was generous enough to host the Coaches Memorial Opening Weekend which will feature tributes to Carmine Argenziano, Bill Batewell and Bob Ambrosini today – the three coaches who passed away over the previous year. That will take place today at Moriches.
As far as the action on the field – it was thrilling and the energy from the dugouts and fans were absolutely electric. You could just feel the excitement and anger from all the emotions the past year. It was relieving to know we arrived at this point – even if many were frustrated with the route it took.
In any event, I had a busy day. I drove to Kings Point to watch the Opening Round of the Skyline Conference tournament then headed over to Moriches to catch the start of the 5pm games. During that time slot, there was one great match up and three blowouts. Sachem East and Ward Melville was the great match up – while Sachem North blew out Central Islip, Shoreham-Wading River cruised past Port Jeff and Center Moriches….well, they had an easy go of extending their win streak to 31-games over Amityville.
But the main event was Sachem East vs Ward Melville with a great pitching duel between Matt Guido and Greg Vivenzio. Greg is the younger brother of Chris, who graduated from Ward Melville last year and those two were slated to anchor the rotation. Chris just completed his freshman season at Pace, while Greg just completed his first varsity win for the Patriots with a one-hit shutout.
The game was intense – two heated rivals with talented rosters. Sachem East has three Division-I players – two of them are everyday players in Richie Heyder (NJIT) and Ty Acker (George Washington), but they could not figure out Vivenzio who worked in-and-out of trouble on a couple of occasions. The only run of the game came on a double steal in the first inning in which catcher Tom Ribaudo scored from third.
From that point on, the pitchers went into lockdown mode. Sachem East’s lone hit came to lead off the 7th inning by Evan Fisher, who advanced to third when the next batter struck out but Ribauldo needed to fire it to first after his hit the ground. Vivenzio escaped further damage with a strike out and ground out to end the game. Ward Melville is back to their role as one of the premier teams in the county.
Final: Connetquot 7, Huntington 1
WP: Sean MiletiJames Goff: 1B, 3B, HBP, 3 RBI pic.twitter.com/W8wwTsWrKn
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) May 8, 2021
The 8pm games were much more compelling – they were Lindenhurst vs North Babylon, Commack vs William Floyd, Mattituck vs John Glenn and Connetquot vs. Huntington.
I was really looking forward to this match up because Huntington is one of the few teams on Long Island that was not negatively impacted much by the shutdown last year in the sense that they return much of their core group of players. Connetquot is the reigning Class AA Champs as we know. The pitching match up of Palmer O’Beirne and Sean Mileti was a good one. But, Connetquot is one of the best offenses on Long Island and O’Beirne did not have his command.
Connetquot got on the board in the top of the second on an RBI double off the left field fence by freshman Ryan Kiendle who drove in Colin Biesel.
The score remained 1-0 in the fourth when catcher Scott Northrop ripped an RBI single to left with the bases loaded to add a run. A bases loaded walk made it 3-0 and then SS James Goff broke the game open with a bases-clearing triple to left.
Goff was the best player on the field last night. He did everything to win the game. He hit a single in his first at bat, was hit by a pitch, stole a base off the lefty, broke the game open in the biggest at bat of that game and also made a great play in the 5.5 hole to his right. He’s an underrated player that excels in all facets of the game. From that point on, the game was essentially in hand with the way Mileti was throwing. He wound up going five shutout innings with 8 strikeouts.
Connetquot was our No. 1 ranked team preseason for a reason – and they came out of the gate like they had a chip on their shoulder. Credit to the players and coaching staff for not resting on their laurels. And O’Beirne is probably one of the best pitchers they’ll see during the regular season so that shows what their offense is capable of. If freshman Ryan Kiendle is going to hit like that all year, that’s another weapon coaches need to worry about. Coach Rob Burger led them to a county title in year 1 and they certainly were going to contend for another one last year.
They will face North Babylon today. Huntington will face neighboring town Northport today. I think they’ll be fine – they have a ton of quality seniors arms such as Chris Segreti, Kyle Colleluori, Aidan Bender and O’Beirne.
