Raiders pick up first D-III victory Newman, Vicente spark fourth-inning rally to earn Shea win

PAWTUCKET – You don’t have to look very far to see how the Shea High baseball picked up its first of the season on Monday.

Pretty much, the conversation starts and ends with the first two batters in the Raiders’ lineup.

Ethan Newman and Keanu Vicente, both seniors, posted identical stat lines: four stolen bases and four runs scored. As a team, Shea swiped 10 bags in an 11-7 win over Hope at Max Read Field.

Newman, the leadoff hitter, finished 3-for-4 with a double while Vicente went 3-for-3 with a triple. Given the fashion in which Monday’s Division III contest played out, the odds were pretty good that when each of them got on base, they were going to eventually touch home plate.

“Right now, our top two guys are doing a great job getting on base … by hook or by crook,” SHS interim head coach Wayde Labossiere said.

Newman and Vicente were part of Shea’s three-run uprising in the bottom of the first. Hope had staked starting pitcher Gabriel Bueno to a 2-0 lead, but then he walked four of the first five guys he faced.

The Blue Wave carried a 6-5 lead into the home portion of the fourth when the Raiders responded with a pair of runs to go up 7-6. Manny Ortiz, a promising sophomore, provided Shea with some breathing room with a tworun single as part of a three-run uprising in the fifth.

Labossiere says the Raiders have been on the lookout for capable strike throwers. Each one of Shea’s pitchers who took the mound against Hope fulfilled that desire with starting pitcher and freshman Brandon Ribeiro striking out three in three innings.

When he wasn’t torturing the Blue Wave on the base paths, Vicente was supplying some solid work in relief of Ribeiro. Vicente was credited with the win after three innings of four-run ball on six hits and four strikeouts. Isaiah Ortiz, a senior, needed just nine pitches to retire the side in order in the top of the seventh.

“We have upwards of five pitchers on our roster, which is a luxury,” Labossiere said. “We’re just going to try and chop it up early in the season … three or four innings with the hope of keeping the pitch count down.”

The Raiders, who started the season 0-3, hope to build off Monday’s performance when Davies Tech buses to Pawtucket for an 11 a.m. contest on Wednesday.

“There’s a lot of fight in these kids,” Labossiere said. “They do understand from a skill standpoint, we’re not there with the elite teams in the division just yet. We’re heading that way and that’s what we want to see – progress.”