Thursday, October 1, 2026
In 2024 and 2025, the Kennedy baseball team won back-to-back conference championships, but their seasons ended with losses to Garden City and Division in the Nassau Class AA finals.
With another strong team this spring, the Cougars are hoping this is the year they can capture a county title.
But first, they have some work to do.
“My expectations for the season are really just more focused on the day-to-day stuff,” said coach Mike Gattus, who guided the Cougars to a 22-6 record last season. “This team has had a lot of success with the two conference championships and two county finals appearances, things that have never happened before in our baseball program’s history. They’re still hungry for more,” he added.
The Cougars are off to a 6-2 start, 4-2 in what appears on paper to be the county’s most-talented conference — AA-1.
This year’s squad includes three players who are committed to Division 1 colleges.
Juniors Derek Yormack and Ryan Yormack, both pitchers and key position players, are headed to Vanderbilt while junior Dylan Babek is going to Stony Brook. Derek tossed a five-inning complete game with 9 strikeouts while also hitting a three-run homer in an 11-1 win over South Side last Friday.
“All three of them have contributed tremendous numbers throughout the course of their careers and they’re off to a great start this year,” said Gattus. “They’re our 1-2-3 hitters at the top of our lineup.”
Other key players include two-time All-Conference senior pitcher Zach Adelstein, returning All-Conference two-year starting senior catcher Derek Fong, All-League junior second baseman Frankie Stella and junior shortstop Matt Tolipano.
Adelstein picked up the win April 14 striking out six over 4.2 innings as Bellmore JFK defeated South Side 13-3. Tolipano and Stella each drove in a pair of runs.
“We really have so many good players,” Gattus said. “We’re in a great place.”
And the program became even better this year with the addition of Steve Costello to the coaching staff. The longtime MacArthur coach is reunited with Gattus, who he coached at MacArthur.
“He’s always been an incredible resource for me,” said Gattus. “As a player, he gave me the blueprint of what it’s like to run a big-time program. Our guys have really gravitated towards him. He was there for every off-season workout and puts in an incredible amount of time so to have his championship experience is really invaluable.”
It’s been an impressive run over the last five years for the Cougars.
They’ve improved on their win total every year since 2021, reached the postseason every year, and the team has earned 37 individual post-season honors including four All-Long Island selections and nine All-County players.
And it appears as if there’s more of that on the horizon.
“For as successful and as competitive as we’ve been, we’re still on the younger side,” said Gattus. “We’ll have many returning players next year.”
But for this year, the goal is to capture that elusive county championship.
Kennedy concludes a three-game set with Elmont at home this Friday at 5 p.m.
