BY JASON LEVY
WATERBURY — The WCA baseball team is entering the end of an era. The school opened in the fall of 2013, with the athletic programs starting a year later at the junior varsity level before stepping up to the varsity level for the 2015-16 academic and athletic season.
With the 2019 spring season underway, many WCA athletes who were freshmen in that inaugural varsity season will be closing out their high school careers for a Spartans’ program they helped build.
“It’s an honor really. It’s really been a learning experience,” said Michael Matta, one of six seniors on the WCA baseball team that have been on the varsity roster since the beginning. “(The biggest lesson was) making yourself better and growing and seeing other people get better too.”
Matta, Mark Cummings, Celestino Toucet, Jacob Torres, Jose Zambrana and Jonathan Castro are the six seniors who have been there for every game. Matta, Toucet, Torres and Castro have actually started every varsity game in the program’s history.
“When these six came into the program four years ago they took their lumps knowing that they’d be thrown into the fire playing at the varsity level,” WCA coach Joe Russo said. “But we knew back then in four years it would pay off and we would have a great team. These kids have followed through with the program and the results are coming through.”
In their first varsity season in 2016, the Spartans went 10-10, playing an independent schedule and earning a berth in the Class S tournament. They joined the Naugatuck Valley League the following season and struggled to a 6-14 record, but improved to 7-13 in 2018 to make the Class M tournament.
“It feels like we’re setting the footprint and molding the team for years to come,” Cummings said. “We’re setting standards. We made the state tournament two years out of the three that we’ve had varsity (Class S in 2016, Class M in 2018) so I feel like we’re setting a trend for this program to go upwards.”
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Castro believes the team’s tireless work ethic has helped the program improve since its inception. His younger brother Justin is a junior on the team and he hopes all the underclassmen carry that value going forward.
“Every year we stressed that in the offseason we get better and I’ve seen it from a lot of people,” Castro said. “Everybody, whether they were working by themselves or with the team, they did it. In the offseason a lot of them were working out in the gym if they couldn’t get to hit. Stuff like that really does help when it comes down to it.”
The seniors are a close-knit group, having played together for the last four years, and some of them dating back further than that. Torres believes the time at practice helps the seniors and the team bond.
“I feel like that’s where you get better as a team,” Torres said. “You get to be more surrounded by your teammates and not just isolated like during game time. I just want to build more love for the game so more people can just come out here and play their heart out every day like I and all my teammates do.”
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It’s still early in the 2019 season, but the Spartans have gotten off on the right foot at 2-1. The Spartans opened the season with a 17-0 win over Wolcott Tech on Monday then came back the next day to defeat defending Class M runner-up Wolcott, 1-0. Toucet struck out seven over 6 2/3 innings and Torres came on to record the final out via strikeout. It was the first time the Spartans defeated the Eagles. WCA was handed its first defeat Thursday, 14-4, at the hands of perennial NVL contender St. Paul. Russo has seen the seniors blossom over the three-plus seasons on and off the diamond.
“As freshmen they came and all freshmen are a little scared,” Russo said. “They’re young for the new surroundings, new school, but the six of them collectively volunteer in the community, they do all kinds of great work together with each other too, not just separately. I couldn’t be more proud of what they’ve been doing. And building a foundation for this program, they set the standards for the kids to follow.”
A major benchmark for the Spartans’ improvement would be to earn a spot in the NVL tournament. WCA has yet to make the league’s final eight since joining in 2017. Russo noted how it’s a bigger indicator of success to be one of the top teams in the league than the automatic berth in the state tournament once a team reaches the eight-win plateau.
“We’ve come a long way. We feel good with our team right now,” Zambrana added. “This is our last chance. We want to leave a mark on this team.”
