NHS Sluggers Fall To Notre Dame In SWC Tourney, Refocus On State Tournament

By Andy Hutchison

Newtown High School’s baseball team was shut down by Notre Dame-Fairfield pitcher Rob Wilcox in a South-West Conference Tournament quarterfinal round game at home on Monday afternoon. No. 5 Notre Dame beat No. 4 Newtown 6-2 to advance to the semifinals. Newtown, meanwhile, will look forward to the start of state tournament play next week.

The good news for the Nighthawks is that, despite eight days between their SWC tourney loss and the first round of states, they won’t have to wait around that long for game action.

In fact, the team’s last regular season game which was originally scheduled for Monday, was bumped to Wednesday after the Hawks qualified for SWCs. Additionally, NHS, after traveling to Morgan to complete the regular season, will also likely play a scrimmage during the weekend, Head Coach Carl Strait said. The fact Newtown had to change the date of the regular season finale turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The Hawks will have an opportunity to break up the monotony of practice this week.

“When you lose in the first round you get a full eight days before you play another game,” Strait said. “It eats at you. There are only so many days you can practice.”

“We want to keep fresh and we want to keep going,” senior Alex Magoulas added.

The Nighthawks never expected to have to push back the date of their season finale. The theme of the season for this squad is that it overachieved. After graduating six starters last spring, Strait and the Hawks thought they would experience growing pains in a rebuilding campaign. Instead, NHS won 12 regular season games heading into postseason — the same as last year when the Hawks were 12-8.

Despite exceeding expectations, just qualifying for the postseason isn’t enough to satisfy the taste-of-success hunger this team has developed with each win. Losing in the first round of SWCs, as one might expect, doesn’t sit well with the team.

In the loss to Notre Dame, NHS found itself in an early 5-0 hole and couldn’t recover. Starting pitcher Charlie Lobosco couldn’t get out of the first inning after being a good luck charm of sorts all season long. The Nighthawks were 5-0 in games in which Lobosco started during the regular campaign, but Monday just wasn’t his day. It was 5-0 Lancers before the Nighthawks came to bat, but it didn’t seem to matter much as Wilcox tossed a dominant complete game. He allowed just five hits and struck out eight batters. Newtown’s Nick Saviano came in and pitched 6.2 innings, allowed just three hits and fanned seven batters to give the Nighthawks a chance.

Nick Urso ripped an RBI double to deep center field to get Newtown on the board. Down 6-1 in the seventh, the team that found a variety of different ways to win games throughout the season didn’t go down without a fight. NHS scratched out a run and got the potential tying run into the on deck circle before Wilcox shut the door.

Strait is confident that Lobosco will return to his usual form and was impressed by Saviano’s effort. He believes the pitching, which carried Newtown through stretches in which the usually strong offense sputtered, will be solid.

“We’ve got the pitching. We’ve just got to score some runs,” the coach said.

Offense was not a problem in the middle of the season during which time the Hawks were scoring runs in bunches (including back-to-back double-digit outbursts against New Fairfield). Strait hopes the hitters get back into that offensive mode in the state tourney. One strong pitching performance is all it takes to defeat good hitting, as evidenced in the loss to ND, and once the state tourney starts on Tuesday there is no chance to recover. One loss and the season is over. Newtown lost to Stamford in the quarterfinal round of the Class LL tourney a year ago. Magoulas is confident that, given the similar record to last year, NHS can again go deep into the state tourney.

NHS was the No. 20 seed in the tourney and had to face No. 13, 4, and 12 seeds as the LL playoffs unfolded last spring. They stand to have a similar seeding when the tourney setup is announced this time around (visit casciac.org for complete tourney info). After seeing his team scratch out wins with final-inning rallies, lights-out pitching, and clutch hitting, Strait believes his find-a-way team can go deep in the 22-team field once again.

“There’s a lot of season left,” he said on Monday.