This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
07/21/2016 12:00 AMAs the old saying goes: What a difference a year makes. In the case of the Guilford Senior Legion baseball team, it was a year that featured more dedication, more drive, more desire, and, ultimately, 10 more victories than Post 48 recorded last summer.
Head Coach Michael Yates and the Post 48 Seniors finished with just two wins in 2015. This season, however, Post 48 returned several core athletes who played baseball last fall and this past spring and their maturity certainly showed up in the standings. Guilford notched a 12-12 record in Zone 3 for a third place finish and won nine of its last 12 regular season games to earn a berth in the State Tournament for the first time in three years.
“Our No. 1 goal was to make the State Tournament, which we accomplished. We had a rough start in the first half of the year, but we got hot at the right time,” said Yates, who completed his second year as skipper. “Last year, we had a very young team with a lot of freshmen and sophomores, so they now had that year of experience and got better in the offseason. They developed into varsity athletes.”
At the heart of Guilford’s nucleus were five 2016 Guilford High School graduates in first baseman/designated hitter Connor Peters; pitcher/infielder/outfielder Lucian Zingarella, who posted a .370 batting average for the year; pitcher Tripper Rams, who won six games with an earned-run average under 2.00; infielder/pitcher Tyler Rogers; and second/third baseman Luke DeRose. The members of the quintet joined forces to play a pivotal role on the mound, at the plate, and, most importantly, in the dugout by mentoring the program’s younger athletes.
“They made up the heart of our lineup. They were fantastic offensively and they were able to help out the younger guys,” said Coach Yates. “We had a lot of tight games, as our zone was tremendously competitive, but they helped keep the younger guys calm.”
Guilford showed how much it had grown from last year by coming from behind to defeat Middletown in nine innings in the club’s fourth game of the season. Post 48 twice rallied from deficits before winning it in walk-off fashion in the bottom of the ninth. Guilford trailed 4-0 after the top of the first inning and stormed back to take a 5-4 lead in the fifth. Middletown tied it in the seventh and went up 6-5 in the ninth, after which Post 48 pushed across a pair in the bottom half to snag the victory.
Post 48 reveled in another shining moment during its final series of the season when it faced rival Madison for a four-game set that took place from July 8-10. Guilford needed to win all four contests to make states and did just that on the strength of some offensive fireworks.
“That Middletown game set the tone for the year by showing we are a different team than last year and that we were more mature and will hang in games. It was great to sweep Madison and our hitting was great. I told them before the series that we needed all four games and it was an offensive explosion with a lot of quality at-bats,” Coach Yates said. “We really opened the games up with big swings. The last game was a tight one that went eight innings, but we went back to our bread and butter with our pitching in Tyler Rogers, who always battles.”
Yates hopes to continue the same trend with even higher aspirations in 2017. In reflecting upon his program’s watershed campaign, Yates said that couldn’t have asked for better bunch of boys to work with this summer.
“We will get older, bigger, and stronger with more experience. Our goal is to continue to make states and maybe compete for a zone title and get a home game in states. It’s nice to be able to compete with the prominent programs in the zone,” Yates said. “It was a fun bunch of guys here this year. They were a great group of kids dedicated and focused on getting better. They put the work in and reaped the benefits.”
Rounding out Guilford’s 2016 roster were shortstop/pitcher Kevin Cargos, pitcher/outfielder Tommy Cattaneo, catcher/infielder Matt Donlan, catcher/outfielder/pitcher Austin Fix, outfielder/pitcher Casey Johnson, first baseman/pitcher Sean Kellaher, infielder/outfielder Kam Miles, outfielder/infielder/pitcher Connor O’Brien, outfielder Evan Song, infielder/outfielder/pitcher Ash Stephens, and outfielder/pitcher Jack Strand.
From the Sidelines
Post 48’s wins came against Middletown (9-2 and 7-6), East Haddam (4-1 twice), Meriden (2-1 and 1-0), Wallingford (14-5 and 6-4), and Madison (9-1, 11-0, 15-6, and 3-2). In the State Tournament, Guilford’s season came to a close with a 1-0 loss to Hamden.
Head Coach Michael Yates was assisted by Michael Gell, who was a teammate of Yates on the Guilford High School baseball team’s 2007 Class L state championship squad.
Guilford finished the month of June at 5-9 before going 7-3 for the remainder of the regular season.