HOLDEN \u2014 Nine consecutive midseason victories earned the Wachusett Regional High School varsity baseball team berths in this year\u2019s Central Mass. Athletic Directors Association and Division 1 State tournament, which are under way and in high gear.<\/p>\n
The Mountaineer boys capped their 2023 regular season at 12-6 with a pair of victories, including an 11-2 thumping of host Shepherd High Regional on May 19. Senior right-handed pitcher Travis Moran fanned eight Rams while yielding four hits in going the distance for Wachusett. Junior outfielder Jason Flaherty banged out 3 RBIs in leading the offense.<\/p>\n
Just 48 hours earlier, the team squeaked out a 4-3 nail-biter against the Rangers of Westborough, which featured the fourth save of the season for reliever hurler Anthony Doe.<\/p>\n
Wachusett opened the 2023 campaign by dropping three of four contests before launching its nine-straight run that resulted in playoff competition for the green and white, who cooled down slightly thereafter.<\/p>\n
Just how did the team execute such a remarkable turnaround at a time when it was so desperately needed?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe turning point for us was that we got the bats going,\u201d said senior co-captain Noah Pratt, who pitches and plays shortstop. Pratt currently is batting .306 with a meager 2.31 ERA. \u201cWe were a little quiet the first couple of games, but we started focusing more. Everyone gets along. We joke with each other, but we\u2019re a family. We\u2019re having a good season, and we\u2019re all locked in with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking things one game at a time. We\u2019ve got playoffs in the backs of our minds, but we just want to win the games that are ahead of us, and we\u2019ll get to focusing on playoffs when the time comes,\u201d explained fellow senior co-captain and pitcher Alex Toomey.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball\u2019s a streaky game. We got hot and lost it a little bit, but we\u2019re going to work our way back on top. We\u2019re motivated to win. I feel like we\u2019ve had a successful season pitching- wise. We all try to pick each other up and keep the chemistry going,\u201d Toomey added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re pitching really well and swinging the bats. We\u2019re playing complete games,\u201d echoed head coach Jeff Kodys, who has injected a winning culture into the Mountaineer program. \u201cWe\u2019ve found a lineup that\u2019s working really well, and we stuck to that lineup throughout the streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur kids are really confident. We have 12 seniors who were in big spots last year. We have kids from Holden who are in this group that won a Little League state title, and they know they can compete with anyone else in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur coach pushing us in practice made the difference,\u201d said Doe. \u201cHe let us know how good we could be, and we believed that. We won one game and then another and figured we could keep it going, and we kept winning games. We lost three games in a row, but we all know how good we are. A couple of bad innings isn\u2019t going to stop our season. We\u2019re trying to get a hot streak going before the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
One significant boost is the return of senior co-captain and lefthanded pitcher Jack Hansen, who missed nearly the entire season with an arm injury. Team stability starts with productivity on the mound, and that\u2019s where Doe, Hansen, Toomey and Pratt all figure prominently.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a labrum injury, and I decided to take some time off so I wouldn\u2019t injure it any more, but I\u2019m ready to go now. I feel good, and I feel confident,\u201d Hansen said. \u201cI just want to get out there and get things done. The camaraderie on the team has been huge for us. Everyone\u2019s up, and we\u2019re determined to win games. We go in and face teams feeling like we can play better than them. That\u2019s the attitude you need to get wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s (Hansen) a guy who we were expecting to throw out a lot this year, but he\u2019s having some arm fatigue. Hopefully, he\u2019s over that and we can add another weapon in going into the playoffs,\u201d said Kodys.<\/p>\n
Honored at Senior Day prior to the Westborough matchup were Braden McLoughlin, PJ O\u2019Rourke, Dennis Jardine, Gavin L\u2019Heureux, Alex Toomey, Jack Hansen, Noah Pratt, Justin Mariani, Travis Moran, Steven Hebert, Anthony Doe and Aiden Riley.<\/p>\n
Members of the 2023 Wachusett Regional High School varsity baseball team are Sam Perry, Ben Domineck, Braden McLoughlin, O\u2019Rourke, Nick St. Cyr, Jardine, Doe, Flaherty, Will McGrail, Gavin L\u2019Heureux, Toomey, Hansen, Lucas Gamache, Pratt, Justin Mariani, Moran, Hebert, Nate Roy, Riley and Ethan Divito.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOLDEN \u2014 Nine consecutive midseason victories earned the Wachusett Regional High School varsity baseball team berths in this year\u2019s Central Mass. Athletic Directors Association and Division 1 State tournament, which are under way and in high gear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}