Calhoun Baseball Clinches Long Island Class AA Title

In a battle to the very end, the Calhoun Colts were able to claim victory against the Connetquot Thunderbirds and bring home the Long Island Class AA Championship.

"Baseball is a great game because of games like this," said David Seinfeld, principal of Calhoun High School.

From the start, it was clear that both teams were bringing the best of what they had to offer to the field at Farmingdale State College. Calhoun started out strong, putting two runs on the board early, but Connetquot answered right back with two runs in the second.

In the third, the Thunderbirds were able to add another run with some key singles, but in the bottom of the fourth, a dropped third strike on the Colt's Nick Savarese enabled Calhoun to score.

For much of the game, the score stayed tied at 3-3. Calhoun wasn't able to produce hits, leaving runners stranded in multiple innings. Although Connetquot was able to continue to move their bats, the Calhoun defense was tight and shut them down.

The ninth inning is where this all changed for both teams. In the top of the ninth, Calhoun pulled starting pitcher Frank Trimarco (who threw more than 100 pitches) and brought in Alex Vargas to pitch the end of the game. Connetquot took full advantage of the change and came out ready to swing.

With a single over the head of Colt's second basemen, Robbie Rosen, by Thunderbirds' John Fiederlein, the score was 4-3. In addition, a single by Steve Schmitt brought in another runner and the Colts were down 5-3 going into the ninth inning.

Although the Colts may have been down, they weren't out. Taking care of business for Calhoun were Alex Rodriguez and Tommy Murphy, with back-to-back singles for the team, making it two on and no outs for the team.  Jon Goldberg picked up a walk and it was bases loaded, no outs. The energy picked up as a wild pitch brought Rodriguez home as Calhoun was down by one run. A smash to left field by Vargas sealed the deal and the Colts took home the Championship with a score of 6-5.

According to Mike Marino, assistant coach, Connetquot gave the team a run for their money, but the hard work the Colts put in all year paid off.

"They work hard every day and they kept up the work. This whole game, they kept fighting," he said."We played a really great team. They hit well, they played defense well – we were lucky to get the win."

Marino noted that although the team pulled together to get the job done, pitcher Trimarco and second basement/pitcher Vargas went above and beyond.

"[Trimarco] kept us in the game the whole time and Vargas came through with a clutch hit at the end," said Marino.

Seinfeld added, "Each one of these team members means a lot to the entire school community."

Calhoun will travel to Binghamton to play for the New York State Championship on Saturday.

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