Facing a six-games-in-eight-days stretch in their quest for both the Fairchester Athletic Association and NYSAIS baseball titles, Rye Country Day won four and lost two. Unfortunately, the two were the championship games.
By Mitch Silver
Facing a six-games-in-eight-days stretch in their quest for both the Fairchester Athletic Association and NYSAIS baseball titles, Rye Country Day won four and lost two. Unfortunately, the two were the championship games.
After beating Hopkins Grammar in the first round of the FAA playoffs May 11, the Wildcats faced the top-ranked team in all of New England, the 15-1 Hornets from Hamden Hall. Well, they’re now 15-2.
Rye mound ace Tyler Fernandez threw a two-hitter, striking out eight and holding the Hornets scoreless. Luke Capellano’s 4th-inning double that drove home fellow junior Liam Dalton was the only run Fernandez would need.
The Wildcats were less successful against King School, who also upset their way into the finals. Though they’d blown out King in a previous meeting, the boys from Rye dropped the title game May 17 by a score of 9-2. The loss made the New York State Association of Independent Schools tourney that much bigger, and it would start the next morning.
Matt Webster, in his first start of the year, pitched into the 3rd against seventh-seed Trinity, yielding two runs. Freshman Enzo Stefanoni took the ball with the bases loaded and got the Wildcats out of the inning. Cappellano, who drove in two runs with an opposite field double in the first, belted a 400-foot home run in the fourth. A crucial insurance run in the fifth would give Stefanoni the win, as senior Fernandez earned a three-pitch save.
A day later it was third seed Berkeley-Carroll, conquerors of the Wildcats in the season’s first week. Senior captain Peter Shu made his first start of the season and pitched 5 1/3 innings of five-hit, two-run ball. Meanwhile the Wildcats offense had a remarkable third inning, hitting three towering doubles to the same spot just short of the left field wall. Junior Erik Hanson got it started, and then senior Quinn Kurzner’s bomb drove him home. By the time they were done, they had the crooked number “4” up on the board. Sophomore Billy Grossman was the story in the fourth frame, slamming a shot to center and then coming all the way around on a botched relay, running right past the catcher who was waiting for the throw up the line.
With Stefanoni mopping up, Country Day took the 5-2 victory.
After the game, Grossman thought about that early-season loss. “Something happened back then. We lost a couple we shouldn’t have, missing assignments in the field, that sort of thing. Coach (first–year mentor Michael Pollack) got us together and told us we were better than that. I guess we believed him.”
In the State title game at Manhattanville College 48 hours later, Rye Country Day took an early two-run lead in the first against three-time NYSAIS champ Poly Prep of Brooklyn when Dalton spanked an RBI single and scored on an error on Cappellano’s single.
But the Wildcats couldn’t stand prosperity. Poly chipped away at Fernandez, scoring once in the first and another in the second on a long solo homer. Three more hits loaded the bases, but a 4-6-3 double play got the locals out of the inning.
A wild pitch in the third plated the final Wildcat run, but that was all she wrote. Poly Prep scored once in the bottom of the third and twice more in the fourth when a sharp single to left plated a pair. The damage would have been greater, but a third runner slipped rounding third and Fernandez, the cut-off man, threw over to end the inning.
Stefanoni replaced an obviously tired Fernandez to start the fifth, but a couple of timely hits, a bobble in the outfield and a missed cut-off man gave the visitors three more runs.
In the end, the Wildcats had an impressive season under first-year coach Pollack and his first-year co-coach John Calandros, doubling up after football season. Before he let them go, Coach Pollack brought his troops together. “I told them, you have be awfully good to lose two championship games in a week. I’m really proud of these kids.”
