Kennedy claims conference crown

Kennedy ended the regular season a full week earlier than everyone else in Conference A-I baseball, thanks to a schedule that included a final-week bye.

But the Cougars (12-6-1 overall) certainly earned that well-deserved rest after a debut in Class A that included a regular-season Conference A-I championship despite injuries keeping two of their top players from even taking the field. A strong crop of sophomores helped steady a ship already led by a pair of seniors — John Austin-Emory and Justin Ganca — and a talented group of juniors.

“In my 40 years of coaching this has been one of the most incredible runs,” coach Eric Passman said. “Every day it seemed like we had to replace someone else.

“The real key was very good play from our two seniors and the tenth-graders who were forced into the starting lineup when some of them weren’t [necessarily] ready. They had to be ready.”

Kennedy closed the regular-season riding a four-game winning streak that included a sweep of Jericho, with Austin-Emory finishing 2-for-4 with a run batted in the finale, a 4-1 win last Thursday. Junior Nick Lisi was 2-for-3 and had three RBIs, while sophomore Eric Gossert netted the save in support of sophomore Michael Schwartz, the winning pitcher. Austin-Emory, hitting at a .370 clip with an on-base percentage in the neighborhood of .450, has been the catalyst for the Cougars balanced offensive attack. 

Junior John Hulkhower has a team-high three homers, but it was some of his teammates who flashed their power in the second game of the Jericho series, an 8-5 victory. Ganca, Austin-Emory and junior Eric Pauly, the winning pitcher in the game who also boasts a .360 batting average, all had round-trippers. For Ganca, it was just another in a line of recent strong performances. “He got off to a slow start but in the last two series he’s hitting like the Justin Ganca that we know,” Passman said. “We have a lot of players that [haven’t] hit for high average, but it hasn’t been a matter of if they hit, but when they hit. We’ve had a lot of hits with two outs and runners in scoring position.”