{"id":16152,"date":"2017-01-22T16:55:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T16:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.axcessbaseball.com\/?p=16152"},"modified":"2017-01-22T22:28:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T22:28:23","slug":"what-is-the-best-school-to-recruit-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.axcessbaseball.com\/2017\/01\/22\/what-is-the-best-school-to-recruit-from\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Best School to Recruit From?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I was down at Shoreham-Wading River<\/strong>‘s practice and watching the varsity and JV team take ground balls and batting practice. It hit me that for a League VII school, they have had a ludicrous amount of high-end players over the years.<\/p>\n

They have had three Carl Yastrzemski Award<\/strong> winners (Keith Osik, Mike O’Reilly, Brian Morrell<\/strong>), and a handful of other high-end Div-I players (Eric Strovink, Bryan Sabatella, Tyler Osik, Nick Bottari<\/strong> just to name a few) and they also have four current players committed to Div-I schools.<\/p>\n

Obviously, there are external factors that give certain schools advantages such as the socio-economics of the city, the average income of the parents, demographics, the quality of the school’s head coach\/athletic director. Here is my best effort to compile a list of some of the other best high schools to recruit from…<\/p>\n

Bayport-Blue Point<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Just like SWR, they are a League VII school that consistently churns out quality ballplayers. While they have not had the same fortunes of Yaz Award winners, there’s a reason they won three straight Suffolk Class A titles–including back-to-back Long Island Championships. They had the Paul Gibson Award winner in Jack Piekos in 2014, All-State P.J. Weeks in 2015 and last year had All-State Dylan Rooney. It has been a great run for BBP, they have been producing diamonds in the rough for several years now.<\/p>\n

Commack<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Cougars have arguably the best pitching staff on Long Island with Brian Morrissey, Peter Theodorellis, James Cardinale and Johnny Pohlman. They also have TCU-commit Tim McHugh. They have\u00a0always had a good reputation when it comes to developing Div-I players. Players like Rick Riccobono, Charles Galiano and Jesse Berardi have helped pave the way for this new-era for the Cougars. They have a golden opportunity in front of them this year and there will be plenty of scouts at their games this year.<\/p>\n

Connetquot<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Coach Bob Ambrosini has done quite a bit of winning in his tenure. He’s closing in on 600 wins and we awarded him with the Lifetime Achievement Award<\/em> at our Awards Banquet. They have won two Suffolk Championships in the past five years. They had a down year–by their standards in 2016–but they fielded a very young team. The talent is always there, Connetquot is a baseball school through-and-through. Their class of ’15 was pretty extraordinary with players like Dave Brehm, Brandon Morse and Travis Bruinsma, while last year they graduated Marc Wagenstein and Christian Nissen. Now they have up-and-comers like Joe Savino, Trevor Adamo and the Yallon twins. Things are always looking up for Connetquot. They have produced a few\u00a0professional players in the past two decades in the Ambrosini brothers and James Lomangino.<\/p>\n

Division\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up in Suffolk County, I only heard stories of the dominance of Division HS. Once I began doing this, I started to realize what kind of machine they really are.\u00a0They won the Long Island Championship in 2015 and followed that up with an 18-win season in 2016 but was upset by Garden City in the postseason. They produced James Varela, Anthony Papa, James Piscitelli, Kieran McLaughlin, Ronmel Ocampo and Joe Spitaleri ifrom those teams and also had the Diamond Award winners in ’15 (Papa), ’14 (Mark Martinez), ’09 (Kevin Chenicek) along with six times in the ’90s. Just a dominant program that will produces hard-nosed kids.<\/p>\n

East Islip<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

They had an unprecedented run under Sal Ciampi Sr., when he guided the Redmen to 21 League titles, three Long Island Championshps and had seven (!) Carl Yastrzemski Award winners and made the playoffs 25 times in 31 years. They have produced Tony Graffanino and Brian Johnson. Although\u00a0have not had the same level of dominance since he retired, they have produced some quality players like David Palmer, Brendan Dowd and Mike Demarest over the past few years.<\/p>\n

Hauppauge<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

They have been very successful over the past few years. Beginning with Matt Reistetter and then Nick Fanti, they have produced two pro players in a brief period. They also had P.J. Contreras and Tyler Sanderson graduate in the last two years. Coach Gutes has done a great job at creating a winning atmosphere. They have a strong core of young players in place so they should maintain a high-level of play over the next few years at the least. They have become the team to beat in League V.<\/p>\n

Hills East<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

They have been producing legit players for over a decade and the lineage looks to be continuing. It really began with John Mincone in 2007, continued with Adam Brown in ’09, Stephen Woods in ’13, Brandon Bonomo (’15) and now they have two of the top players currently on the island in Mike Palazzolo (’17) and Matt Hogan (’18). They also have a potential Div-I player in Joe Litchhult. Coach Belz has been fortunate to have some big-time players in his program and he has gotten them to the next level. Their 2015 might have been the most loaded, as they also had Matt Schwartz (Vassar), Rich Villa (Lafayette), Joey Marzouk (Hofstra).<\/p>\n

Hills West<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Coach Migliozzi gets rave reviews how he is able to get the best from his players–which makes them a no-brainer to be a part of this list as long as he is still there. This past year they had only one Div-I player in Bradley Camarda, but the previous year they had Jon Faraci, Aaron Glickstein, Nick Lombardi and Owen McMenamy. They are another team that churns out 13+ win seasons and five or six college players per year.\u00a0They have had one player drafted and that was T.J. Pecoraro in 2010. I had the fortune of matching up against him in a 2009 postseason game at Centereach HS.\u00a0I left with the score tied 3-3 in the eighth inning and they beat us 5-4 in 11 innings–a classic game.<\/p>\n

Longwood<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

They have flown under the radar, but if you look at their track record over the past decade–it is pretty staggering. They have produced JJ Bessell, Dan Parisi, Andruw Gazzola, Kristopher Killackey, Sean Rausch and Troy Simpson–just to name a few, that have– either already or are soon will have–an impact at the college level. Playing in the competitive League I brings out the best in players and they have certainly benefited from that.<\/p>\n

MacArthur<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Generals have been a powerhouse for decades. They won the Long Island Championship in 1987, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996 (NYS), 1999, 2011 and 2015. They have been producing All-State, Conference MVPs and Div-I athletes for years. They have had five Diamond Award winners since 2008–Tyler Savin, Josh Barry, Jesse Tuozzo and Adam Heidenfelder (2x).<\/p>\n

Massapequa<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Chiefs have pretty much been the equivalent of a baseball factory since their inception. Let’s just talk about their 2012 team for a moment. Here’s a list of their players and the colleges they wound up attending:<\/p>\n