Hicksville lived out the old baseball saying that “pitching is (insert favorite percentage here) of the game.”
Coach Frank Ciaramitaro expected Terrance Wong and Austin Mars to be his aces. Instead, the juniors missed the entire season due to injuries, forcing him and assistant coach Joel Cardoza to rely on players barely familiar with the mound.
To use another famous baseball quote, the Comets will have to “Wait till next year” after finishing with a 2-12 record in Nassau AA-II, 4-13 overall.
“There were lots of close games,” Cardoza said of the Comets’ campaign. Hicksville lost three games by one run, and three games by two runs. The only lopsided scores came against conference champ East Meadow, which the Comets played without their most effective pitcher, junior J.J. Bernet.
“There’s a lot of parity in this conference, and there were games we could have won,” agreed Ciaramitaro. “In terms of experience [our conference rivals] were senior-laden. They had two or three [experienced] pitchers.”
By contrast, the Comets’ lineup was heavy with juniors, which makes next year promising. Ciaramitaro singled out freshman Nick Pathmanathan as a prospect, saying he batted in the .290s for the season. He also praised junior Robert Schulz, who put in lots of innings on the mound despite never having pitched before.
“He gave it everything he had,” said Ciaramitaro.
“We’re proud of the fact that they all gave us everything they had,” echoed Cardoza, noting the heartbreaking loss by hurler Cameron Melville the day before. Melville entered the bottom of the seventh leading Plainview 1-0 and was one strike away from victory. But what the coaches assessed as a couple of questionable calls at the plate undid the junior, and the host Hawks went on to win 2-1.
On May 10 the Comets fell to Plainview 7-2 as Schulz took the loss. Catcher Peter Capel accounted for both runs, with his sixth-inning double driving in Connor Reilly and Joe Sarni.
In the third game of the series, and the season’s swan song, Sarni was on the losing end of another close contest, as Hicksville fell to Plainview 3-1.
“We had to do a lot of patchwork, with kids playing out of position,” said Cardoza. “We had to coach more, and had to make many adjustments.”
