One season after making it to the Section V baseball semi-finals as the top seed in Class A1, Churchville-Chili made it to the Class A1 championship game before falling to Greece Athena. But their 17-6 season and multiple players returning for next season gives the Saints hope that this was just another stepping-stone on their way to the seventh Section V title in program history (1941, 1943, 1946, 1973, 1974, 2009).
“Like I said right from the first day of tryouts, we had a job to do; last year we lost in the semi-finals in a game we should have won and our job this year was to win a sectional title,” head coach and Class A1 Coach of the Year Guy Puglia said. “Unfortunately, today we fell a little short and didn’t play very well, but we have a good group coming back next year and right back at it.”
The Saints starting lineup in the championship game featured five seniors, four juniors and one sophomore. Their top three in the order were all juniors in shortstop Braedon Reina, center fielder Joshua Campbell and starting pitcher/first baseman Michael Sardou. Sophomore Parker Farnham played left field while original first baseman, junior Evan Putney, came on in relief and pitched the final four innings allowing just one earned run while also driving in two of the Saints’ four runs with a clutch two-out, two-RBI single in the third inning.
“I knew my team was down, so I just tried to get ahead of batters with a lot of first pitch strikes,” Putney said. “It (the five-run first inning) could have been nerves; we’ve never been here (the final) before, and they’ve been here four or five times in a row.”
Churchville-Chili began the regular season with a six-game winning streak and were 9-1 after the first ten games. Finishing 15-5 and earning the top seed in Class A1 for the second straight season, they defeated Greece Arcadia in the first round of the playoffs and Irondequoit in the semi-finals on a walk-off home run in extra innings by Reina.
They will undoubtedly miss the senior leadership of players such as catcher and clean-up hitter Cooper Romich, second baseman Anthony Shortino, third baseman Jaylen Lopez and designated hitter Justin Meister, but they hope to learn from the past two seasons and take that final step in 2024.
They will need to do it under a new leader as Puglia said he is moving to Florida and will be resigning soon.
“Next year’s team is going to be better than this year’s team. The program is definitely growing,” Puglia said. “The JV (junior varsity) team went 17-3 and a lot of good kids are coming up, so the program is very strong.”
“We’re definitely going to come back here next year,” Putney said. “We’ll have some experience and some younger kids coming up and put a run for it. Next year, I think we’re going to win the whole thing.”
