The percussive sound of hardballs meeting metal bats and leather gloves are once again in the air, as Rye High School’s baseball team prepares for another season of … winning.

“Winning is always the goal,” said Coach Mike Bruno, now in his 16th year as head coach of Garnet baseball. “We play [neighboring] Harrison twice this year, so we’re looking for- ward to playing them. But we’re always trying to compete for our section championship.”

Not everything is the same this year, however. A change in how the New York State Public High School Athletic Association classifies schools of varying sizes has altered the annual mix of opponents for Rye and some other schools. Six sports, including baseball, have added a Class “AAA” for the largest schools; as a result, some smaller schools have fewer opponents in their local leagues. That means the Garnets, who are in Class A, will face teams like Eastchester, Ardsley, and Pelham more often – this year, they will account for six of Rye’s 16 regular season games.

“All of those teams are tough,” Bruno said. “So it will certainly be a new challenge to overcome for us.”

Seven Rye ballplayers are back as seniors this spring, including a few three- and four-year starters who have given the program a boost since their debuts as underclassmen. Anchoring the pitching staff: senior captains Shephard Griffiths and Charlie Margiloff,

each of whom has started both on the mound or in the outfield during their tenure. Griffiths, whose fastball has been clocked in the mid-80s, finished 4-0 and was an All-Section I player last year. Margiloff, who finished with a 2-1 overall record, recorded the Garnets only playoff victory, against Horace Greeley High.

While Griffiths and Margiloff will likely be in the batting lineup when not pitching, the other two senior captains, Tommy Broderick and Dillon Schmidt, will likely be atop the batting order this season, given the speed and contact hitting they displayed last year.

Schmidt, a four-year starter who has committed to play baseball at Hamilton College, had one of the biggest hits of the team’s 2023 season: a walk-off, extra-inning single in a 1-0 victory against Yorktown. Broderick had several multi-hit, multi-RBI games last season for the Garnets and is the longest-tenured infield- er on the roster.

Other returning players include senior pitcher A.J. Miller, who recently committed to Syracuse as a football player, as well as senior infielder James Kennedy, sophomore shortstop Nolan Hutson and senior pitcher Cam Holler. New additions to the club include sophomores Jackson Pineault, Jamie Morris, and Lucas London, each of whom hope to bolster the bottom half of the batting order entering the season.

“We’ve continued to traditionally build this program up every year since I started,” said Bruno, who has been coaching since 2008 but has been involved with the program since its beginnings. “We had 50 kids try out this season, two modified teams, a strong little-league program, and a summer team headed by my assistant coach Chad Charney.”

The Garnets hope to build off last year’s 14-7-1 campaign. They start with a game against Bronxville as part of a training trip in Florida later this month.