Pierson, Bridgehampton Baseball Teams Renew Local Rivalry; Whalers Gear Up For Playoff Run

Five years or so ago, when Bridgehampton announced that it would bring back its varsity baseball program after 40 years of not having one, the writing was on the wall for Pierson that it would be losing players from Bridgehampton who were playing on a shared baseball team.

Last week, the rivalry between the two schools was finally renewed when they met in what was the final regular season three-game series for both teams. Playoff-bound Pierson swept the series, but Bridgehampton/Ross certainly showed a fight in the first two games. Pierson won game one, 4-2, and game two, 5-3, on May 10 and May 11, respectively, before winning the regular-season finale, 13-2, at Mashashimuet Park on Friday, when the Whalers honored their six departing seniors — Brendan Burke, Vincent Cavaniola, Charlie Culver, Reed Kelsey, Dan Labrozzi and Everett McMahon.

The loss on May 10 officially knocked the Killer Bees out of playoff contention — they needed to sweep the Whalers in order to finish with a .500 record and qualify, a tall order for any team. After starting the season undefeated with sweeps of Shelter Island and Greenport, the Bees failed to win another game this season, finishing 6-12 in League VIII play. Bridgehampton head coach Lou Liberatore was disappointed with that fact, but he liked the way his team fought throughout the season and is already eager to get next season started.

“I’m proud of our guys. We played hard,” he said. “Obviously we didn’t play as polished baseball as we wanted to at times, but we played hard throughout the whole season. Regardless what the score was in the games, we attacked each inning.

“I’m extremely tough on our guys, and they know that and they’ve embraced the challenge,” Liberatore added. “The goals won’t change next year either. We’ll be going down to Class D next year, but still, we’ll know we’re ready to compete in Class D when we’re competing at the top of the league with Class C teams, so that’s still our goal. Our goal is to compete with whoever is on the schedule next year. Use the offseason to continue to get better.”

Bridgehampton is not graduating a single player this season and therefore all players are expected to return, with a year’s worth of varsity experience under their belts now, and will add some players from the junior varsity ranks, so the expectation is that the team could be better next season.

“The goals don’t change and they know that,” Liberatore said. “Regardless if we’re playing Smithtown Christian, Shelter Island or Pierson, there’s an expectation of how we want to play. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that in the second half of the season, put a complete series together. We played a really tight two games with [Pierson] games one and two, we just can’t put a full three together.

“We feel like we’ve got good pitching returning, we’ve got everyone returning, but it’s their jobs to work during the offseason, and we need to work during winter workouts and fall workouts,” he added. “But we’re excited to have this group back. We’re excited to add, but we’ve got work to do.”

Pierson, which earned the third and final seed with a 13-5 record, was set to defend its Suffolk County Class C crown, with the double-elimination playoffs having started on Wednesday in Southold, with the Settlers grabbing the second seed with a 15-3 record. The winner of that game advanced to play top-seed Port Jefferson (16-2 in League VIII) on Thursday, with the losers of both Wednesday and Thursday’s games meeting Friday to play for the right to move on to the best-of-three county championship series, which is expected to begin this Monday, May 23. For up-to-date brackets go to sectionxi.org.

The Whalers, at times this season, have shown their vulnerabilities, particularly on defense. Then at other times, they have shown why they are the defending county champions, having beaten both Port Jeff and Southold this season. Pierson head coach Jonathan Schwartz said if his team puts together a full seven innings, it’s capable of winning every game it’s in.

“We just have to make the routine plays. If we did that in the Southold series, we would have won two out of three, the second game for sure. We’re just trying to focus on cleaning up the little things. We should be fine. We were right there with them.”