Chaminade has had many dominant seasons in their program’s rich history. You don’t have to turn back the clock too far to look at their 2022 season as possibly their greatest season. If that’s Number 1, then right behind it is their 2011 team.
They won the CHSAA Championship over St. Dominic in a thrilling 3-game series and had 13 players that went onto play collegiately. They finished the season 21-5.
It was a team that was accustomed to winning, who had won their championship as freshmen and sophomores but came up short in the 2010 playoffs.
While the years have gone on, their legacy will go down as one of the best teams that Long Island has seen. Their starting shortstop, Thomas Roulis, would be named Co-Player of the Year along with Holy Trinity’s Jack Parenty.
Roulis had a remarkable collegiate career at Dartmouth and his professional career lasted until…well it still might not be complete. But before you get the full story let’s turn the clock back.
The Early Days
Roulis was born and raised in New Hyde Park. He is the youngest of three children, with two older sisters.
His father played college basketball at San Diego State and Hartnell College.
From a young age, sports always came natural to him. While baseball was obviously his future path, he was also a gifted soccer play as well. In fact, there was a real chance his future could’ve included playing college soccer as well.
He grew up idolizing Derek Jeter like many players his age and played for Merillon Little League. He recalls having some great battles with Port Washington during those days. One year, they reached the State Championship before losing to perennial powerhouse, Massapequa.
He took hitting lessons with Dean Tatarian, who played pro ball from 1987-1992.
Roulis played travel ball with the LI Lightning during middle school. They would eventually become the LI Storm when the legendary Mike Leiderman took over.
“Mike was passionate about everything – especially the Storm,” said Roulis. “He wanted everyone to succeed. His heart outweighed everyone’s. No matter what it was, he made sure we had everything we needed to be the best versions of ourselves.”
Chaminade
When it was time to attend high school, Thomas’ father approached him with the idea of taking the Catholic school entry exam.
“I didn’t really know anything about Chaminade but I wanted a change of pace athletically and academically.”
He would star on not just the baseball team but also soccer. In an interesting coincidence, he noted that both the teams’ success mirrored one another. As a freshman and sophomore both teams would win the Catholic League Championship. They would each lose in the playoffs during his junior year before bouncing back and taking the titles as a senior.
“Every year we thought we were the best team. After losing as a junior, it was only a matter of time before we would come out on top,” he said.
Soccer had the New York State tournament, and they would go on to win that as well.
Baseball hadn’t introduced the NYS tournament yet – that wasn’t until 2022. That year’s Chaminade team was outstanding. These are the players that wound up playing collegiately.
- Thomas Roulis – Dartmouth
- Andrew Gallagher – Fairfield
- Brendan Mulligan – Hofstra
- Anthony Ferrante – Hofstra
- Kevin Weissheier – Hofstra
- Andrew Pohalsky – NYIT
- Scott Goldberg – Colby
- Eric Truss – Middlebury
- Terrence Connolly – UNC- Wilmington
- Joe Duarte – Trinity
- Kevin Richie – Rochester
- Shaun Caulfield – Rochester
Roulis recalls having some good battles with Holy Trinity and St. Dominic. In that 2011 championship, they would go toe-to-toe in a best-of-three that was slated to be played at NY Tech but rained forced it to be moved to Holy Trinity.
They came away on top, with Roulis recording the final out of the game on a ground ball to him at second.
It was a fitting cap on a great season for Roulis who batted .500 with 38 hits, 11 doubles, 22 runs scored and 30 RBIs.
His college recruiting process was a difficult one in the sense that he didn’t know which sport to play. He was fortunate enough to be supremely talented at both soccer and baseball and there was legitimate interest from a handful of schools.
He narrowed down his choices to a couple of the Ivy League schools as well as some in the NESCAC due to their high academic prowess.
“I was recruited by Dartmouth’s assistant coach, John Anderson. All the tournaments I went to – even in Florida, he would check on me. When we got back to Long Island and I went to the Headirst camp or even a scrimmage he would show up. He really showed a vested interest in me. I appreciated that. He would check in on me during soccer and ask about my family. He pursued me and made me feel like they were head and shoulders better than those other schools.”
Roulis noted that his biggest supporters were his parents, who made it known that regardless of what he choose to do, they would support that decision and had his back. He also noted that Shaun Manning had a big role in his college recruiting process.
Manning was his coach with the LI Storm. They did a ton of traveling over his last two seasons of summer ball. They went on trips to Georgia, Florida, California (for a week), North Carolina and Tennessee – the latter of which they wound up winning.
That team was loaded, as it was comprised of most of the players from Chaminade’s team.
Dartmouth
Another factor in his decision was that Dartmouth was offering him the chance to be an immediate impact starter. They followed through on their word, and Roulis followed through with his play.
He was thrown right into the fire.
His collegiate career began at Alex Box Stadium at LSU against future big leaguer Kevin Gausman. He ripped a line drive to center field in his first at bat but it was caught. He also grounded out to future big leaguer Jacoby Jones. They wound up getting swept, but played them tough – losing on a walk-off in the third game of the series. Roulis went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs in that contest.
It was a great freshman season for Roulis who played in all but one game. he was second on the team and fifth in the Ivy in RBIs (32 and scored 25 runs. He performed his best in clutch situations, batting .388 with runners in scoring position and 4-for-7 with the bases loaded.
In what would be a trend for Dartmouth, they reached the Ivy League Championship and lost – as they did each of the next three years.
That summer Roulis played in the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League for the Shelter Island. He performed exceptionally well, he held the league’s single season record for batting average for a number of years.
Entering his sophomore season, expectations were high. Roulis began the season going 6-for-15 with a double, triple, two runs scored and 2 RBIs and was named to the Dairy Queen Classic All-Tournament team.
That tournament was hosted at the old Minnesota Twins stadium, the Metrodome, which was home to the University of Minnesota. In the last game of the tournament against Utah, Roulis went 3-for-5 but unfortunately the biggest story was what happened on one of his hits. While he ripped one into the gap and was legging out a triple he severely injured his hamstring which would sour an otherwise great start to the season.
It was an ongoing issue all season. He would recall attempting to come back 10 days later, only to re-aggravate the issue while he was again attempting to leg out a triple.
Dartmouth would go onto have a great season in 2013 as they finished with a record of 32-9 (15-5 Ivy League). In the championship series against Columbia, Roulis would attempt to make a pinch hitting appearance but it did not go well.
“I hadn’t seen live pitching in 2 months and I struck out on 3 nasty sliders,” he said.
That summer, he would go to Vermont to play in the NECBL where he was able to log significant at bats over the 40-game season.
Roulis bounced back in 2014 with a very strong season. He played in 38 games, batting an even .300 with 4 triples, 25 RBIs, 20 runs scored and a remarkable .995 fielding percentage (1 error in 194 chances). He was named All-Ivy League honorable mention. He notched a 4-hit game against FIU and recorded the only RBI in their loss in the Ivy League Championship series.
Thomas Roulis named Ivy League Player of the Week. Roulis collected 10 hits, scored 5 runs, & had 5 RBIs pic.twitter.com/j8r6UFJgNb
— Dartmouth Baseball (@BigGreenBasebal) April 15, 2014
That summer he went back to the NECBL to play with the Plymouth Pilgrims. He continued his consistent offensive production by hitting .305 with 20 RBIs over the 40-game season.
Roulis was draft eligible and noted that he did get a “couple looks from scouts” but nothing materialized. Additionally, that summer he started feeling some pain which wound up lingering into the start of 2015. It resulted in a hernia surgery and it put him on the shelf for the entire season.
In the summer of 2015, he went back to the NECBL for one last go with Vermont. He had a tremendous stony, batting .467 over 20 games with a 1.113 OPS. For his accomplishments, he was named to the NECBL All-Star game.
Star 2B Thomas Roulis of @BigGreenBasebal w/ kind words of thx for Neers fans at Sat’s party. @odoylerouls @TheNECBL pic.twitter.com/H3naPP7l1n
— Vermont Mountaineers (@MountaineersVT) September 14, 2015
Roulis, who had been named a team captain prior to his junior season, finished his collegiate career with a flourish as he batted .328 over 37 games. He compiled 10 extra base hits and drove in 20 runs to go along with his usual excellent infield defense.
Dartmouth had to play a play-in game that season, but they lost to Yale which was the end of his 5-year collegiate career.
Due to the injuries, he was not selected in the MLB Draft despite having the toolset to warrant at least a late round selection. He graduated with a degree in Government
The Next Chapter
Roulis participated in our “Battle of the Border” game at the PAL Complex which pitted the top college seniors from Nassau vs Suffolk. It was the first event that we ever hosted.
He continued to train hard in hopes of continuing his career.
In January of 2017 he went to California on a whim to play in the California Winter League. After a couple days there, he was taking BP and was approached by a gentleman who watched him take two runs.
“I’m going to sign you. You want to come play?” he said to Roulis.
Roulis was confused, he didn’t even know who he was. He was informed that his name was Chris Newell and he ran a team called the Bloomfield Beavers in the United Shore Baseball League (USBL).
What a defensive play from Thomas Roulis in the USPBL All-Star Game. @ESPNAssignDesk
#SCtop10nominee #YourSummerDestination pic.twitter.com/f7DwOoNhl6— USPBL (@uspbl) July 8, 2018
“It was one of the newer leagues and it wasn’t a grueling schedule – that was kind of their whole thing. I was about 60 games – 4 games per week and all the games within Michigan.
He took his game to even another level as he won the batting title in 2017 with an outstanding .348 AVG. His contract was renewed from 2018 and he ran it back, winning the title again (.312).
Looking forward to watching Thomas Roulis compete for back to back @uspbl batting titles. Ethan Wiskur and Dan Ward are in the hunt. Will be an exciting race over the next two weeks! pic.twitter.com/QE4YH6CyEy
— Justin Orenduff (@JustinOrenduff) August 25, 2018
“Some guys signed with affiliated teams but I was not one of them. After the second season I was signed with the Milwaukee Milkmen of the American Association. I never stepped on the field with them. They traded me to the Can Am League.”
Roulis was there for the 2019 season with the Trois-Rivieres Aigles.
“That was a much more grueling schedule. I was living in Canada in Quebec. They have a sick fanbase. The guys were awesome. We had TJ Stanton who was a player/manager. It was fun we got to play in a lot of different ballparks and be around guys that had played high-level ball. I was supposed to go back in 2020 but that was the cancelled season. TJ eventually became the manager of the Rockland Boulders and he asked me to play the 2021 with them but we had just started building the second Storm facility and I told him I’d be hanging up my cleats.”
Roulis eventually took on a larger role at the Storm Academy – becoming the Vice President Facilties Coordinator.
It wasn’t officially the end of his career, though.
Roulis was approached about possibly playing for the Greek National Team back in 2018. He agreed and before long he went to Bulgaria in the summer of 2019 to compete in the European Championships. He went back again and competed in Lithuania, Italy and the Czech Republic. Their next competition is slated for September of 2025 and he is expected to be their starting shortstop.
“As long as I can get my act together and get back in shape,” he said jokingly.
Greece will be looking to qualify for the major competition for the first time since 2004. With Roulis’ track record of success, don’t put it past them to make that happen.
