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2020 CT Spring Team Preview - Staples

WESTPORT, Ct. - Big shoes to fill is nothing new at Staples.

Last year’s state championship season was the second crown in three years and the third time in the past five the program has been in the Class LL finals. A trio of standouts from that 25-3 squad must be replaced including Chad Knight, the top-ranked 2019 right-handed pitcher in the state who is now at Duke.

“When you lose kids like Chad Knight you have great models for the next kids,” explained head coach Jack McFarland, who also lost captains Harris Azadian, a right-handed pitcher now at Union College (NY) and Drew Rogers to graduation. “We have a lot of eyes on our kids.”

The starting outfield of Zack Zobel, James D’Amico and Blake Lawrence is back to anchor the 2020 squad. Zobel, a UMass-Lowell signee ranked ninth among New England senior outfielders, returns in right field after hitting .430 with 30 RBIs and 14 stolen bases a year ago. D’Amico, a .330 hitter who had a walk-off hit in the conference championship game in 2019, will man center field with strong-arm Lawrence back in left.

“We’ll be really good defensively this year,” noted McFarland, who has a 244-116-15 career coaching mark. “We’ll catch the ball, we just need to score enough runs to supplement our pitching and defense.”

Azadian and Rogers, played first or third last year and are gone as is shortstop Andrew Moy, among 13 seniors on last season’s roster. Justin Lessing, the 116th-rated 2021 in New England and a member of Team Connecticut at the 2019 Future Games, will play short and pitch for this year’s team with senior Beck Lewis also penciled in at an infield position.

Three sophomores - Alex Oppenheimer, Finn Popken and Chris Kennedy - are others that McFarland is looking to fill in the remaining holes.

“The 10th grade is a really good class for us,” pointed out McFarland, who has taken Staples to the finals seven times and captured four conference championships in 15 years with the program.

Ben Schattman returns at catcher with Kevin Lindwall pushing for playing time.

“All are high-level players, my concern is experience in the batter’s box and scoring a lot of runs,” said McFarland, who also returns players like junior left-handed pitcher Alex Deutsch and versatile senior Adam Petro. “I think we’ll be in a lot of tight games this year, so we have to perform in big situations.

“The saying here is 21 outs - offensively and defensively. On defense we want to stay as close to 21 outs as we can. You can win if you get to 22 or 23 in a game but if you get to 25 it’s hard to win.

“We stress pitching and defense,” McFarland continued. “We want to catch the ball. We don’t want crooked innings. Outs have to be outs, that’s our big thing.”

Last year Staples defeated Southington 3-0 in the finals.

As for keys to repeating a playoff run that included wins over four of the top seven teams (St. Joseph, Ludlowe, Cheshire and Southington) in the final ratings …

“We have to piece together a lineup the way we want to run bases and get the clutch hits,” McFarland explained. “That remains to be seen. There’s some pressure on these kids.

“The fun part of coaching is piecing together the next group.”