“It was always the Flyers”
That was the popular rallying cry that was seen on social media recently as Chaminade attempted to run it back and win their third consecutive NSCHSAA championship. For the seniors, however, it was really their second title since Chaminade does not typically call up underclassmen to varsity and their 2020 season was wiped out due to the pandemic.
With the most talented team that Long Island has seen in decades, the Flyers rolled through the league and won their first two playoff games to qualify for the championship series against Kellenberg. After surprisingly losing the first game of the series, 4-3, they came roaring back to win Game 2, 8-1, and then held off a resilient Kellenberg team today, 5-1, to earn a three-peat.
Playing in 94 degree temperature (plus the added heat from the surface of the Hofstra turf), the Chaminade bats sprung to life in the third inning against Kellenberg LHP Brendan McCann.
Aidan Katzman got the scoring going with an RBI single to score Michael Sweeney. Brady Steinert followed that up with an RBI single of his own to score Nick Ungania, but Katzman was thrown out at second base rounding too far.
Kellenberg was able to get on the board in the home half of the fourth on a sac fly by Kenny Hirschfeld to score Vin Napolitano. Andrew Heiderstadt escaped further damage with a strikeout of Steven Hardiman to end the jam. It was a missed opportunity for the Firebirds who also stranded the bases loaded in the second inning when Paul Napolitano popped out to end the inning.
It was close game until the fifth. Brian Heckelman led off with a walk, Michael Sweeney struck out for the first out. Nick Ungania followed with a single to put runners on the corners with one out. Aidan Katzman lined out to shortstop Peter Murphy for the second out of the inning. Brady Steinert was intentionally walked to load the bases. On the surface, it’s a sound decision to make a force at any base, but with the red-hot Michigan-commit coming to the plate it was difficult to justify. Nawrocki made them pay with a line-drive double to left field to score two runs and make it a 4-1 game. Steinert later scored on a wild pitch to make it 5-1.
Here’s the 2-R double by Nawrocki https://t.co/sGpvjDFLBy pic.twitter.com/FVbNajwx2a
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) May 31, 2022
That was all the scoring for the game. Heiderstadt did well enduring the heat and a strong Kellenberg offense to limit the damage to one run. Antonio Tufano came on in relief to slam the door. He had an outstanding season for the Flyers as their primary weapon out of the bullpen. He pitched 13 innings, saved five games, allowed six hits and zero runs with 17 strikeouts. On a team full of Div-I commits, he was one of the unheralded stars.
The Flyers had 8 hits in the game – two apiece by Ungania, Nawrocki, Katzman and one from Steinert and Sweeney.
From my perspective, this was one of the best teams ever assembled. They are 23-2 and they have 15 college commits from the senior class. There’s 8 Division-I commits on the team. And they’re not done yet. This is the first year of the state tournament. They will face the representative from the Buffalo region in the NYS tournament on June 10 at St. John’s University. The winner will play the NYC winner the next day.
Postgame interview with Nolan Nawrocki who was named Most Outstanding Player of the CHSAA Tournament pic.twitter.com/a3JO8chSfS
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) May 31, 2022
It will be interesting to see the team that Chaminade assembles in 2023. On one hand the have plenty of talented juniors they can ask to step up – but the crux of the 2021 and 2022 units was the 2022 class. Will another team be able to step up and wrestle the throne from them? That remains to be seen. Until then, Coach Pienkos and his squad deserve a ton of credit for their exceptional run. And to their 2022 seniors – they had to deal with losing their sophomore season, entering 2021 with zero experience and then having the sky high expectations this season and they delivered.
