Baseball Team Rebuilds, But Aims For Success

By Andy Hutchison

Every team goes through rebuilding phases. You don’t have to look past the Newtown High School baseball field to see a good example of this. The team faces basically a two-thirds overhaul of the starting lineup scenario this spring.

Six starters are gone from last year’s team, which went 14-10, including postseason.

But rebuilding doesn’t necessarily equate to struggling. The Nighthawks do have eight returnees with varsity experience and Head Coach Carl Strait is hopeful that his Hawks can maintain its trend of winning 12 to 13 regular season games as it has in each of the past three years. He said the team has made strides in each of those seasons and the goal is to continue that pace.

“Every year, our goals are to equal or better the finish from the year before,” said Strait, recognizing that it won’t be an easy task. “This year’s going to be a little more of a struggle. It’s a matter of how hard the kids work and how hard they want it.”

The reason it won’t be so easy for the Nighthawks goes beyond the graduation of a bulk of starters. The South-West Conference schedule is such that teams play teams of equal caliber twice, based on conference records during the past two seasons. The Hawks went 9-3 and 8-4 each of the last two years, respectively, in league play. As a result, NHS will have to face the likes of Pomperaug, Bethel, and Bunnell (the SWC champions), all of which should finish among the top handful of teams in the SWC, Strait believes, twice each. Other tough conference competition should come from Masuk, Stratford, and Notre Dame-Fairfield.

Strait believes that strong defense and solid pitching can help his team win close, low-scoring games — and that that will be the recipe for success in 2008.

“We’re going to have to win ballgames 3-2, 2-1,” he said.

Strait commended the town’s Parks and Recreation Department for its good maintenance of the fields, which has allowed the team to get out and practice throughout the chilly end of March, during which time some teams were stuck practicing indoors while fields were brought up to standards, Strait said. The advantage of playing outside is that the team has been able to practice gamelike situations, such as hit-and-run strategies, which he hopes will give his team a leg up early on in the campaign.

“We’re playing solid defensively — infield and outfield,” Strait said late last week as the preseason winded down. “We have a lot of arms. We have eight kids who can pitch at the varsity level.”

Pitchers include seniors Greg Rodden and Nick Saviano (each of whom also play third base); juniors Jake Devellis, Charlie Lobosco, and Anthony Lucia (each of whom also play in the outfield); and sophomore Kyle Kromberg (who can also play in the outfield).

Among the other key players, Strait says, are senior middle infielders Alex Magoulas and Nick Urso, senior outfielders PJ Cochrane and Walter Murphy; junior infielder Cole Depuy; junior utility player Chris Marks; and sophomores George Zaruba (first baseman) and Brandon Rosenberger (catcher).

The Hawks, who were scheduled to open the season at home against Pomperaug on Wednesday, have three apparently tough tests among their first four games, including the opener with Pomperaug and battles with nonleague foe Fairfield Ludlowe and Bunnell.

The Nighthawks don’t play Stratford, which knocked them off 2-1 in the state tourney’s quarterfinals a year ago, until May 14. Other notable games on the schedule include a May 10 date with Pomperaug in Cooperstown, N.Y., which has become a tradition for the SWC schools; and a May 12 game with Brookfield at the Ballpark At Harbor Yard in Bridgeport on May 12.