John Downing fires a complete game and Chaminade captures the first ever CHSAA NYS Championship pic.twitter.com/0zCtFUooL1
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 12, 2022
To say that 2022 was a dream season for Chaminade would be an understatement.
Legendary Head Coach Mike Pienkos, who has won 650 games and led the Flyers to an incredible 20 NSCHSAA Championships during his tenure. Pienkos was named Axcess Baseball’s Coach of the Year this past season as he led the Flyers to a 25-2 record and they captured the first ever New York State Catholic League Championship after two hard-fought games at St. John’s University.
Chaminade Head Coach Mike Pienkos was named the High School Coach of the Year Powered by the BP Group pic.twitter.com/rSuKWiRTRL
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) November 8, 2022
The Flyers entered the season as the reigning champs, returning virtually their entire team from 2021 and with a 15-senior class that was all committed to playing in college. With that being said, things don’t always go as planned for teams. In fact, rarely do things go as planned.
For the Flyers, however, they were able to dominant from Day 1 led by an all-world pitching staff led by John Downing, JJ Gatti and Andrew Heiderstadt. All three are now pitching in college at Seton Hall, Dayton and SUNY Maritime, respectively. Here were there stats for the season:
- John Downing: 9-1 record, 62.1 IP, 0.44 ERA, 0.82 WHIP. 33 hits, 99 Ks, Newsday Player of the Year and Axcess Cy Young Award
- JJ Gatti: 7-1 record, 50.2 IP, 0.82 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 26 hits, 54 K’s, 2 extra-base hits, All-League
- Andrew Heiderstadt: 4-0 record, 1.38 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 13 hits, 28 Ks and won the championship game over Kellenberg in Game 3
John Downing was the recipient of Axcess Baseball’s Cy Young Award Powered by the Arm Academy @CHSFlyersBall pic.twitter.com/7fgpruqJ5u
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) November 7, 2022
Additionally, Downing and Gatti fired back-to-back shutouts in the New York State Championship. Downing also pitched a perfect game in April. So essentially, they were able to dominate from wire-to-wire in the most competitive league on Long Island while they had skyhigh expectations.
“It was an amazing, amazing season,” said Pienkos. “To win our division, to win in the playoffs – that alone is a very tough task. We were very, very blessed with a group of players. It is rare to get so many good kids at once. I certainly feel it could be the best team I’ve ever had. We had to beat two great teams in the state tournament. I was just very blessed with that group. It will be tough to duplicate that,” he added.
Following the season, Chaminade was showered in awards and accolades, including Pienkos who said jokingly, “it felt like the awards kept coming.” It was recently announced Pienkos will be inducted into the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame.
Not to be overlooked is the Flyers offense. As previously mentioned, the entire senior class is now playing in college and they also had several juniors and a sophomore on the team. They wound up having the CHSAA Player of the Year, CF Nick Ungania, who is now at Binghamton. He batted an incredible .418 with a .608 OBP. He held down CF and the leadoff spot in the lineup for the Flyers for the past two seasons. He scored 30 runs, stole 28 bases and drove in 27 runs as well.
Here’s the 2-R double by Nawrocki https://t.co/sGpvjDFLBy pic.twitter.com/FVbNajwx2a
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) May 31, 2022
Their double play duo of Nolan Nawrocki (Clemson) and Brady Steinert (Marist) was about as good as it got. Nawrocki was named Most Outstanding Player of the CHSAA Tournament after he came through with a number of clutch hits. They were able to plug in Hofstra-commit Michael Sweeney into to left field to start the season but they moved him to third when there was an injury and Aidan Katzman (Manhattan) and Evan Baschnagel (Maine) stepped in. Both were juniors and Div-I commits as well. Pienkos noted that both of them will be starting in OF spots this season.
Behind the dish, they had Brian Heckelman, now a freshman at Towson, who won the CatcherMTRX Award – given to the top catcher in Nassau County – with his ability to handle that pitching staff and be a steady presence in the middle of the lineup. Fordham-commit Matt Dieguez was another junior who answered the call when his number was called and wound up playing 1B and coming through with many key hits in the playoffs as well.
So with a graduating class of 15 last season you would think they would be young and inexperienced this year but that’s just not the case. They return Hofstra-commit Mike Sweeney, who is the captain of the team. Pienkos lauded him for his versatility, as he played OF and 3b for them last season and he has a chance to be their SS this season. He added that they have three players competing to play SS and that is between him, Matt Dieguez and Joe Chanis.
Chanis’ twin brother, Thomas, will likely be their catcher. He is committed to Gettysburg College.
They return Stony Brook-commit Michael Cervoni who is fully healthy this season after missing some time with injury last year. We featured in the Up Next series which you can read here.
As far as the pitching staff, that features some more question marks due to the fact that they only had one junior, Antonio Tufano, get many innings. Tufano, a left-handed pitcher committed to Catholic University, was outstanding and was one of the more unheralded stars on the team. He went 1-0, led the team with 5 saves, allowed 0 runs over 11.1 innings, yielded just six hits and two walks while striking out 14. That’s equal to a 0.79 WHIP and .153 AVG.
Not to be overlooked is senior LHP Matt Brandt, who started the championship game in 2021 against Kellenberg, but had suffered and injury prior to the season and as pitching coach Jimmy Bailin said, “simply was stuck behind the 3 aces.” He will likely step into a larger role this season and he is also an offensive weapon that plays first base.
Coach Pienkos said, “trying to replace 3 starters will be difficult. Obviously, a big loss and will be impossible to replace, but we do have some experience.” Keep in mind the team ERA was 0.74, which may not just be hard to replace but may never be repeated by any team ever.
LHP John Carroll (Chaminade 2024) showing a sharp breaking ball.
FB: T78
CB: 66-68 pic.twitter.com/9r2K962jII— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 22, 2022
In terms of the newer players, Coach mentioned John Ruchalski as someone that should have a role, as well as junior LHP John Carroll who he said “looks promising.”
Chaminade is a school that does not often call up underclassmen, and Pienkos said “if we do it likely wouldn’t be a position player.”
They have been conducting tryouts for the past week or so, they will have first cuts today. The Flyers have plenty of talent in the pipeline, so although it may seem like they graduated a big class and are looking to fill holes with inexperienced players, people also said that in 2021 and all they did was win the championship. So until they are knocked off in the playoffs, it’s impossible to count them out.
Their first league game is against Holy Trinity, led by reigning CHSAA Coach of the Year, Dan Luisi. That will take place on Tuesday, March 28. The Titans feature a dangerous team that can make some noise this season after featuring a very young team in 2022 that still went 15-6 and has a trio of Division-I commits.
