News
Valiants Win Skyline Championship!
5.06.2007
For the first time in the 25-year history of the program, the Manhattanville baseball team is going to the NCAA Division III Tournament, clinching their historic berth with an emphatic 18-5 win over Stevens Sunday afternoon at Dutchess Stadium to claim the Skyline Conference Championship, another first for the program.
“I’m proud of the kids,” third-year Head Coach Jeff Caulfield said. “We accomplished something Manhattanville baseball has been trying to do for a very long time, and to be the first to do it is a very special honor.”
The Valiants will learn the details of their first NCAA Tournament games, Monday, May 14 when the regions and pairings are announced on NCAASports.com. Eight national regionals will be held May 16-20 on various campus sites, and the winner of each regional will advance to the Division III College World Series May 25-29 in Appleton, Wis.
Manhattanville won a regular season championship two years ago – in what was then called the Knickerbocker Conference – but had never won a league tournament until today. The Valiants accomplished the feat in the school’s final Skyline Conference game Sunday, with Manhattanville’s teams headed to the Freedom Conference this fall.
“Our goal from the beginning of the year was to go out champions,” Caulfield said. “This is the kind of win that takes our program to the next level and proves how talented we keep getting year after year.”
Sunday’s Championship Game was played only because the Valiants failed to close out the Ducks in the first game of the day, losing a hard-fought 4-3 game when Stevens ace Scott Picerno came out of the bullpen to allow one hit over the final three innings and stave off elimination.
Picerno was on the mound again to start game two, but the junior – working for the third time in four days – was tagged early and often by a Manhattanville attack that scored the second-most runs and racked up the second-most hits of any game this season on the year’s biggest stage.
The top-seeded, regular season champion Valiants scored three times in the first inning on five hits, getting RBI singles from Mark Barrar (Newton Square, Pa.) and freshman A.J. Triano (Rye, N.Y.), whose two-out knock drove in a pair. After Stevens bounced back with three in the bottom of the third to tie the game, Triano doubled in another run in the third as Manhattanville rebuilt a 5-3 lead.
Picerno stayed on the mound into the fourth inning, but that’s where the wheels came off for the Ducks. Manhattanville put the first nine men on base on six hits, two errors and a misplayed fielder’s choice ground ball. By the time the dust had settled, the Valiants had scored 10 runs on eight hits against three pitchers and blown the game open. Thomas Verrengia (Staten Island, N.Y.), who went 5-for-6 in the game, doubled twice in the inning and scored a pair of runs.
The Valiants coasted from there, tacking on three more in the fifth before both teams emptied their benches and Rob Mulligan (Staten Island, N.Y.) pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to nail down the win. Mulligan and catcher Jeff Dunn (Durango, Colo.), two of three Manhattanville seniors, then found themselves on the bottom of a dog pile to the first base side of the mound as the Valiants celebrated the title.
“Everything we’ve done all offseason and all year long paid off today,” Caulfield said after the Valiants played their fourth nine-inning game in a four-day span.
Barrar, the other Valiant senior, went 3-for-4 in the championship game with two RBI including the game’s first run-scoring hit in the first inning. A fifth-year senior, three-time All-Conference selection and Manhattanville’s captain, Barrar gleefully accepted the Skyline Conference Championship Trophy from Commissioner Tracy King after the final out was recorded.
“I can’t say enough about the leadership this weekend and all year long Mark has given us,” Caulfield said. “He refused to let us lose the second game.”
No Valiant, however, did more offensively over the week than Triano, who earned the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award after going 8-for-17 with seven RBI over the four-game event. Triano went 4-for-5 with four RBI and three runs scored in the decisive game after going 0-for-4 and committing two errors in the opening game Sunday.
“A.J.’s an example of a kid who could have played somewhere else because of his ability but chose to come to Manhattanville,” Caulfield said. “He’s an outstanding young player and no situation is too big for him.”
Another freshman, Steven Arroyo-Falcón (Bronx, N.Y.) was the beneficiary of all the Valiant offense, picking up his fourth win of the season after allowing three runs on six hits over five innings. Frank Albano (Valhalla, N.Y.) bridged the gap to Mulligan in the ninth with three solid innings of relief.
Stevens (20-20) used eight different pitchers and a total of 25 different players in the championship game, also the last Skyline game in their athletic department’s history. Picerno was saddled with the loss and allowed a total of six earned runs on 12 hits over his three innings.
Manhattanville baseball (23-17) will be the fifth program this year to compete in the NCAA Tournament, the most in the history of the athletic department. The Valiant softball, men’s basketball, men’s hockey and women’s hockey programs also won conference championships to earn automatic bids. Four Manhattanville teams won Skyline Conference Titles in 2007: baseball, softball, men’s basketball and women’s tennis.