Boys athlete of the week
// The Post-Gazette’s top male performer from the past seven days
The past week: As a pitcher for the baseball team, Cicchinelli is 5-0 and has given up one earned run in 35 innings.
Check this out: The Riverside senior got a three-year Army ROTC scholarship to Gannon University. What’s it like to go from not pitching much before to now being a go-to guy? It’s really no different, honestly, I just prepare myself a little extra this year for the pitching role. I worked a little extra in the offseason in the winter with my dad. Every Sunday, we would go to a place near East Palestine, Ohio, and we’d hit and afterward we’d also work on my pitching, too. Last year, I didn’t throw a lot in the offseason, so that was one of my goals this year, to get my mechanics back to where they should have been and get my velocity back up there, my control, especially. You’ve given up one earned run so far. What’s allowed you to have success on the mound? Every time before I go out there, that’s actually one of my goals, to never give up a run every inning. I think it helps me when I tell myself that, just getting in the right mindset. Pitching is a lot of mentality, I think, as much as physical ... I owe it to my teammates, too. They’ve been doing a great job on defense and hitting the ball really well to put me in the position to win as well. Did you ever play anything other than baseball? I played basketball up until 10th grade.
Why’d you give it up? I actually wanted to focus on just baseball and my grades. At the time I wanted to play college baseball, but eventually I gained a desire to try to go to college somewhere to do Army ROTC. The application process was pretty tough, so I had to put a lot of time into that. I think it was good to give up basketball and take a little extra time on my grades and the SAT and ACT. Are you a Steelers fan? Yeah, I’m a big Steelers fan. I also like some other teams, like the Saints, too. What’d you think of who they took in the draft? I was definitely excited to see they T.J. Watt because obviously everybody’s seen what his brother has been able to do with the Texans. And people are saying that [T.J.] is very similar if not better than his brother, so we could definitely use someone like him on defense. What is something people would be surprised to know about you? I’m no movie critic, but I really love movies, going to see different types of movies. My least favorite would probably be romance movies. That kind of stuff.