Kennedy shuts down Garden City

Kennedy piled up zeroes by the dozen—nearly two dozen in a row—on the baseball field against Garden City last week, blanking the Trojans in three straight games and now sits one win away from back-to-back Conference A-I crowns. The Cougars (13-3 overall, 12-3 in Conference A-I play) ram their winning streak to eight in a row, outscoring Garden City 10-0 over the three games, the last a 1-0 nailbiter last Thursday.

“The pitching was outstanding,” coach Eric Passman said. “And along with the pitching the defense was outstanding, because we didn’t strike out [many]. They hit the ball and we made the plays.”

Senior Justin Stybel went the distance in the finale, allowing just three hits and striking out five. He received just enough support in the fifth inning when junior Tyler Griffith’s single scored junior Nick Lisi. “We’re not hitting a lot but it’s been quality not quantity,” Passman said. “It’s not if we hit, but when we’re going to hit. We hit with runners in scoring position and had a couple of two-out hits to score runs [in the series].”

In Kennedy’s 5-0 win two days earlier, senior Eric Pauly delivered a pair of home runs and drove in three, while senior John Hulkhower was a perfect 4-for-4 at the plate. Junior George Savas struck out three and allowed just four hits over six innings of work. “This was his best game,” Passman said of Savas. “He kept most of them off-balance. He dinks and dunks and then hits you with a fastball.”

Perhaps no pitcher on the team is riding more of a hot streak than Joe Correo, a senior who missed all of last year due to injury and seems bent on making up for lost time. He went the distance and struck out seven in a 4-0 win to knock off the Trojans in the series opener on May 4. Griffiths again delivered the big hit, plating the Cougars first run with a run-scoring double in the second. “We scored four runs but we only had five or six hits,” Passman said. “We made [the hits] count.”

That win for Correo backed up a no-hitter in his previous start, a 12-0 victory over Sewanhaka on April 21, in which he allowed only a walk to the second batter of the game before retiring the last 19 hitters he faced. In throwing the no-hitter, Correo struck out a career-high 14. Hulkhower had three hits and four runs scored and Greg Goeller had four hits and a pair of runs batted in.

“It all starts with his fastball,” Passman said of Correo. “He spotted his fastball and has a good changeup and slider. His slider’s his out pitch if he’s spotting his fastball.”

Entering the final series of the regular season, Kennedy needed only one win over second-place Carey to secure the regular season conference crown. All three games were played after presstime, though the Cougars had already locked up a slot in the Nassau County Class A playoff tournament slated to kick off the first round this Saturday.