Connetquot
Connetquot Starts off With a Bang and Recap of Opening Day for Section XI
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 Conferenc...
Connetquot Ready To Protect Their Crown
Entering the 2019 season, Connetquot was my pick to capture the Suffolk Class AA Title. Having watched them in the previous two years, it was just very clear that they had the high-end talent and the necessary experience to win the title. It took three games against a perennial playoff team in Ward Melville, but ultimately the T-Birds proved me right with a convincing win in Game 3. They had their season ended in a thrilling Long Island Championship game against Massapequa in which they lost 7-6 with the winning run coming on a sixth inning HR by Nick Schwartz. They made it interesting in the seventh as the T-Birds loaded up the bases with two outs and the count ran to 3-2, but Massapequa’s RHP Kenny Galvin induced a fly out to right to end the game. Nevertheless it was a tremendous ...
Sean Mileti Commits to Molloy
One of the unfortunate truths about the pandemic is that it has hit the higher education industry hard. While the Harvards and Yales of the world will be fine since there’s no shortage of students eager to get an Ivy League degree, there will be a huge impact on the mid-tier colleges that will have a lower enrollment than they ever had. We have already seen colleges close in the pre-pandemic era such as Dowling College and Briarcliffe. Now we will be seeing many casualties post-pandemic. New York Tech announced in August that they will be leaving the NCAA for at least two years. Concordia has taken it a step further by announcing they will be closing and the campus will be purchased by Iona College following the spring semester. The school opened in 1881, so this is rather remarkable...
Suffolk County Leagues Not Yet Finalized
I was very surprised to hear that the Suffolk County leagues are not yet official, despite the chart being posted on Section XI’s website. Nassau County’s is posted and we are only a couple months away from the season at this point. So what’s the hold up? I was told that Riverhead’s status is the hold up. If you remember earlier in the school year, they were intending to eliminate sports for the 2020-21 year in order to save the district $960,000. They reversed course and reinstated sports. The issue was that Section XI had progressed to move on without them for this year and made the 2021 leagues. Now that they’re back, a decision will need to be made in regards to where to place them. Their enrollment would typically fall in either League 2 or 3. Once a deci...
Reasons To Be Excited For 2021
Last year at this time, everyone was full steam aheads towards another baseball season. We had no idea what was going on literally on the other side of the world. I don’t read the Wall Street Journal enough to know what’s going on in China so I had every reason to believe we would be on the verge of a normal year. I’m sure I was not the only one that was blind-sided by the cancellation of the 2020 high school and collegiate baseball season. It was awful news for everyone involved. We had already posted 65 high school season previews, hosted two college showcases and began covering college games over the course of the first two weeks of the year when the plug was pulled. Fortunately, we did have a semblance of a season in the form of summer and fall baseball. Everyone owes...
Q & A With James Goff
When Connetquot won the Suffolk Class AA Championship in 2019, they did so in large part to their core of upperclassmen led by Paul Gibson Award winner Joey Savino, All-State LHP Matt Goodis, large-school playoff MVP Matt Brown-Eiring, All-State catcher Josh McGee and a trio of Division-I players like Alex Ungar as well as the Yalon twins. But to win a championship you win a full team contribution and you also need stout defense. Middle infielder James Goff was a crucial piece to their championship team. He was a starter for much of the season as a sophomore. If they were going to defend their crown in 2020 it would’ve been with him at the top of the lineup and he will certainly be a key piece again in 2021. He announced his commitment to Adelphi University this week and their coachi...
Bay Shore Captures 2020 Suffolk Varsity Division
Coach Mike Herbst on Ryan Smerechniak’s outing and the offense in the 5-4 victory pic.twitter.com/72U10dsIo4 — Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) August 11, 2020 2020 took high school sports away from us, but thanks to the LI Boys of Summer, the class of 2020 was able to experience some semblance of closure to their varsity baseball careers. The Suffolk Varsity Division was put together featuring seven high school teams in (mostly) their entirety. With all teams making the playoffs, it did somewhat mitigate the impact of the 9 game regular season but still seeding does usually have value. Bay Shore flipped that narrative on its head by losing all eight of their regular season games before flipping a switch in the postseason and running the table in the three game playoff and defeat...
Bobby Molinaro, Babylon Defeat Center Moriches and Mike DeFilippo Outduels Ventimiglia
It was another entertaining day of baseball at Moriches Complex in day 3 of the Town of Brookhaven tournament. As I suspected, this quickly went from a recreational summer tournament to an intense revisiting of deeply rooted rivalries and I love it. The passion that was on display yesterday is not typical for a tournament in July that includes several players that have already graduated. So much so, in fact, that Friday’s rainouts initially meant no playoffs for the tournament but enough coaches voted for it so Monday will now feature semifinals and finals. At 3pm, I covered Babylon and Center Moriches. This is a rivalry matchup that has been completely one-sided in recent years due to the unprecedented success of Center Moriches. Babylon has always been a quality team, but last year...
OTD: Massapequa Overcomes 5-0 Deficit, Wins Third Consecutive LIC
Massapequa holds on, 7-6, to win the Long Island Class AA Championship for the third consecutive season ! pic.twitter.com/KEF44EkuVo — Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 8, 2019 Once again, Massapequa has done it. They are your back-to-back-to-back Class AA Long Island Champions. This time, they defeated Connetquot 7-6 in one of the best games of the year. In a rather curious decision, neither team decided to throw their ace for the Long Island Championship. Connetquot jumped on the board first in the bottom of the 2nd inning, thanks to a Jared Yalon RBI. Yalon came through once again for the Thunderbirds in the bottom of the 4th inning with a 2 RBI double. This put Connetquot in front 5-0. When it seemed like Massapequa was down and out, they most certainly weren’t. With the bottom...
OTD: Connetquot Captures Suffolk AA Championship
Connetquot is the 2019 Suffolk AA Champs ! They will face Massapequa in the Long Island Championship on Saturday pic.twitter.com/DVn38w3IzF — Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 4, 2019 When Connetquot made a deep postseason run into the Suffolk AA Final Four last season, many felt that they had overachieved. Everyone except the players, who felt they should’ve won it all. One year later, they have climbed the mountain top and captured the AA County Championship for the first time since 2015. They did so with a 14-1 victory against No.1 seed Ward Melville and ace Max Nielsen. The T-Birds and their high-octane offense had been held in check in Game 1 by Ryan Hynes, but defeated Ethan Farino yesterday. They faced UCONN-commit Max Nielsen, who was coming off an 18-K master piece on Frid...
OTD: Matt Brown-Eiring Throws CG Shutout to Send Connetquot to AA Finals
Coach Rob Burger is going to the Suffolk AA Finals in his first year at the helm for Connetquot pic.twitter.com/0IhOa1ufp0 — Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) May 30, 2019 There are a lot of similarities between 2017 Commack and this year’s Connetquot team from the insane amount of talent right down to having a first-year Head Coach. Just as those Cougars did two years ago, the T-Birds are headed to the Suffolk AA Finals, one year after losing in the Final 4 on their home field to Eastport-South Manor. This year’s team was not going to be denied. They defeated No. 7 Longwood, 2-0, in Game 3 of the semifinals. Coach Burger was undecided about who to send to the mound following yesterday’s loss. “We were in the office just sitting around for about 45 minutes and Matty Brown came over to u...
OTD: Eastport-South Manor Holds Off Connetquot; Advances to To First Class AA Final Since ’12
Eastport-South Manor is headed to the Suffolk Class AA Finals with a 3-2 victory ! pic.twitter.com/qfosu0J54T — Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) May 25, 2018 Six years ago it was on this same field that the Eastport-South Manor Sharks had a chance to win a county championship against Connetquot. They had better fortunes this time around as they are now one step closer to accomplishing that feat. They held off Connetquot’s late rally to win 3-2 and they have a date with West Islip on Sunday. Starting pitcher Alex Doskoez was efficient and used his defense all game, striking out five batters in a complete game victory. He proved his mettle on a number of occasions, stranding runners in scoring position in the first, fifth and sixth innings and seventh innings; exemplifying the classic ‘b...
