Shoreham-Wading River entered the 2018 high school baseball season with a good deal of uncertainty, and that was understandable. After all, the Wildcats had lost 17 — yes, 17! — players to graduation. That would be a crippling number for most teams, perhaps, but not SWR. READ
It wasn’t as if things were going well for the Riverhead High School baseball team, but at the same time, they weren’t going too badly. That is, until the fifth inning.
It was in the fifth when the wheels started flying off. Smithtown West struck for 13 runs in the fifth and sixth innings combined to turn a 3-1 Suffolk County League III game into a 16-4 laugher that was stopped after six innings because of the mercy rule Tuesday at the Pulaski Sports Complex in Riverhead.
The Blue Waves weren’t laughing. READ
The way this D.J. responded to a high-pressure situation and the result it brought was music to Riverhead’s ears.
The way the seventh inning of Tuesday’s Suffolk County League III baseball game at the Pulaski Sports Complex in Riverhead started was hardly what D.J. Chandler wanted. READ
After winning so many games last season (24 to be exact), the Shoreham-Wading River High School baseball team lost a lot — namely 16 players to graduation, seven of whom are playing in college.
Among them is Brian Morrell (Notre Dame), the two-time winner of the Carl Yastrzemski Award, which goes to the best player in Suffolk County. READ
Baseball has been good to Scott Thompson and Darnell Chandler. The two Riverhead High School seniors will move on to play at the NCAA Division II level, but before they do so, they have some unfinished business as Blue Waves.
The pair sees Riverhead as a playoff team and then some. READ
Considering that Riverhead had opened the season with series against the three premier baseball teams in Suffolk County League III, it was quite conceivable that the Blue Waves could have started off with an 0-9 record.
Considering that Riverhead had a .194 team batting average in those first nine games (and was the victim of no-hitters by Half Hollow Hills East and Smithtown East), it’s rather surprising that the Blue Waves are 3-6 in league play.
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What is one to expect of a big high school baseball team, but big things?
That is surely the case with Shoreham-Wading River (19-6 last year).
