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Class A: Championship Recap

June 13, 2016

Travis Larner
New York Staff

Class A: Championship Recap


Saturday, June 11, 2016 is a day that the Wantagh High School Warriors and junior Jimmy Joyce will never forget.

That’s the day he twirled a one-hitter to upset the state’s top-ranked team in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAAO) Class A semifinals, and then hit a game-winning solo home run to secure an extra-innings victory in the state championship.

With two outs in the top of the ninth inning, Joyce crushed a solo shot over the wall in left field at Union-Endicott High School’s Pete Sylvester Park to give the Warriors a 6-5 advantage over Section VI’s Williamsville East High School.

“He (Flames pitcher Charlie Mack) went down 2-0 and I had a pretty good feeling a fastball down the middle was coming,” Joyce said. “I put a good swing on it and the wind happened to help me out a little. The job got done.”

“You can’t get more fitting than to hit a solo homer to win the game,” Wantagh head coach Keith Sachs said about Joyce’s hit. “He had a couple dinky singles that helped us, and then he hit a home run. He just finds so many ways to help us win; it was just more dramatic this way.”

The Flames looked to equal the score in the home half of the inning, as Mack, a sophomore, was issued a lead-off walk by Wantagh starter Bobby Hegarty. Mack, however, was gunned down trying to steal second base for the second out of the frame. Hegarty then struck out junior Jack Rubins to secure the win.

While it was Joyce who produced the dramatic game-winning run, Hegarty pitched his heart out on the mound in the final game of his high school career. The nine-inning, 120-pitch outing was his longest of the year. Having entered Saturday on a stretch of three-straight one-hitters, the right-handed hurler faced an abnormal amount of adversity in the first two frames. Thanks in part to a couple of miscues in the infield, the Flames scored five runs, three of which were earned, and led the Warriors 5-1 after two innings of play.

“We didn’t play real well behind him, but he just never lost faith in his teammates and never stopped doing what he does, which is pitch to contact and trust his defense,” Sachs said.

“I’m not used to that happening at all,” claimed Hegarty. “Last time I had a start like that was probably my second start of the year. I just had to start hitting my spots.”

Hegarty and the Warriors allowed only two Williamsville East base runners to reach second over the next four innings. The seventh inning was slightly more trying, as a base hit and two intentional walks loaded the bases for the Flames, setting up a force play at any base with only one away. Hegarty responded with his biggest punch out of the afternoon, as pinch-hitter Brandon Szubinski looked at strike three for the second out. Sophomore Nick Kieffer would fly out to leave the bases juiced.

According to Sachs, he approached his senior starter in the late innings about coming out of the game, but Hegarty would have none of it.

“He didn’t want to come out,” Sachs stated. “He said, ‘I have one more inning left in my high school career.’ We would never hurt a kid’s arm, but that would have been his last inning. He would have fought us for another one.”

The Warriors began their comeback in the fourth inning, plating three runs to trim the four-run deficit to 5-4. Junior Trevor Fagan led off with a double that he rocketed down the left field line. Seniors Joe Murphy and Mike Derham followed with would-be sacrifice bunts that both resulted in base hits, the former inducing a wild throw from Flames starting pitcher Ben Geiger that allowed Fagan to score. Derham drove in Murphy with his bunt single. Wantagh’s fourth run was scored on an erratic pitch from Mack, who moved from short to relieve Geiger in the fourth. The wild pitch reached the backstop and allowed Derham to score all the way from second base.

Fagan tied the game in the following inning on a sac fly, plating Joyce, who led off the fifth with a single through the right side of the infield.

“You’ve played the worst two innings of your season and committed more errors in two innings than you have in a month in a half. Play one inning at a time, score the next run, get the next base runner, play the next five innings the way we know how to play, and I guarantee you’ll have the tying run at the plate. That’s what we said,” explained Sachs on how he addressed his club.

The state title is the second in program history and the first since Sachs guided the Warriors to the crown in 1998. Ironically, that was the same year the senior Hegarty and his classmates were born.

“There are a lot of similarities,” Hegarty said. “1998 was the year I was born, and 6-5 was the score they won by. We walk in the gym every day and see the banners of the champions, and there’s a white state championship ball. We’ve always said that we wanted the white ball and now we’ve got it.”

“To be the new ’98 team means the world to us,” Joyce added.

Inside the Box Score

  • Wantagh scored six runs on 12 hits and committed two errors.
  • Joyce paced the Warriors at the plate, going 3-for-5 with a home run, two runs scored and one RBI.
  • Senior Will O’Brien and Murphy each collected two hits for Wantagh.
  • Hegarty’s final line on the mound: 9.0 IP, 9 H, 5 R/3 ER, 4 BB and 3 Ks.
  • The Flames, who sought the school’s first-ever state title, scored five runs on nine hits and one error.
  • Williamsville East was led offensively by senior Mike Poturalski and Kieffer, who produced two hits apiece.
  • Mack finished 1-for-4 at the plate and fanned six in 5.2 relief innings for the Flames. He was tagged with the loss after giving up two runs on seven hits, but did not issue a walk.
  • Geiger surrendered four runs on five hits and two walks while fanning one in 3.0 innings as the Flames’ starter.

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