The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Class LL champ Staples finishes atop final poll
When the season’s first Register baseball poll came out on April 17, Staples earned 29 points and finished four spots out of the Top 10.
The following week, the Wreckers didn’t receive a single vote.
And though Staples would intermittently receive votes throughout the season, it again received nary a vote in the final regular-season poll on May 29 after posting a 13-7 record and earning the No. 11 seed for the Class LL state tournament.
But it’s Staples that sits atop the season’s final poll, following its 5-1 victory over previous No. 1 Amity in Saturday’s LL championship game.
“It’s a great day to be a Wrecker,” pitcher Chad Knight said after his complete-game effort on Saturday. Not a bad week, either. Buoyed by a pitching staff led by Knight and Ben Casparius, the
Wreckers rolled through the Class LL tourney. The blanked Cheshire, 6-0, and Wilton, 3-0, in their first two games, survived a 1211 slugfest with Westhill in the quarterfinals, then topped Ridgefield 7-3 behind a 14-strikeout effort from Casparius.
With Casparius, the Gatorade State Player of the Year, unavailable on the mound in the finals against four-time defending champion Amity due to pitchcount rules, coach Jack McFarland put the ball in the hands of Knight, a sophomore. The big hurler responded in a big way, holding Amity to five hits and helping his own cause with a two-run homer in the fifth, a 415-foot blast to straightaway center.
Casparius went 3-for-4 with an RBI double and became the state’s all-time hit king. Chris Drbal went 2-for-4 with an RBI triple one pitch before Knight’s homer. Max Popken also drove in a run, and No. 9 hitter Harry Azadian started the three-run fifth with a base hit.
Meanwhile, after several close calls, including a loss to Amity in the LL title game two years earlier, McFarland notched his first title. It was also his 200th career win.
“I’m in a kid business, I want kids to be happy,” McFarland said. “All you can ask as a program is to play for championships. We’ve been in five FCIAC championships, two state finals. That’s who we want to be as a program.”
Amity, which has been No. 1 in every prior poll this season, finished No. 2 (the Spartans did receive one first-place vote). Class M champion Waterford earned two first-place votes and finished No. 3, barely ahead of Holy Cross, which also notched a pair of first-place votes. Rounding out the Top 10 are Foran, which made a miracle run from a 7-13 regular season and No. 32 seed to win the Class L state title; Ridgefield, Class L runner-up North Haven, Westhill, Wilton and East Lyme.