The Section 1 baseball championship games began May 27 and will continue through Sunday.
Below is the schedule, which will be updated as games are played.
Teams that reached the finals without losing a playoff game will need to win only one game to become Section 1 champion in their class. Teams that emerged from the loser’s bracket will have to win two.
This is true in classes AAA through B. With only four teams in Class C, the finals are a straight two-out-of-three series.
Below find game stories from Thursday’s Class C meeting between No. 1-seed Tuckahoe and No. 2-seed Leffell and through games played Saturday.
Schedule
Class C
Best of three
May 26
Leffell 5, Tuckahoe 2
May 28
Tuckahoe 15, Leffell 8
Sunday May 31
at North Rockland High School, Thiells
No. 1 Tuckahoe vs. No. 3 Leffell, 1 p.m.
Class B
Saturday, May 30, 10 a.m.
No. 1 Putnam Valley vs. No. 3 Pawling (Putnam Valley needs only one win for the title)
Sunday, TBD (if necessary)
Class A
Saturday, 1 p.m.
No. 2 Byram Hills vs. No. 5 Pleasantville (Byram Hills needs only one win for the title.)
Sunday, TBD (if necessary)
Class AAA
Saturday, 4 p.m.
No. 1 Ketcham vs. No. 3 Mamaroneck (Mamaroneck needs one win for the title)
Sunday, TBD (if necessary)
Class AA
Saturday, 7 p.m.
No. 1 Rye vs. No. 2 Mahopac (Rye needs only one win for the title)
Sunday, TBD (if necessary)
Tuckahoe evens series with Leffell with finale Sunday
THIELLS — Tuckahoe coach James Puma knew the ache. It has never left. When he was a senior at Westlake, his team needed one win to qualify for the Section 1 baseball playoffs. It didn’t get it. He graduated 17 years ago and it still bothers him.
So Wednesday at practice, he had a message for his players — especially its eight seniors: No. 2-seed Leffell had beaten the top-seeded Tigers in the opener of their best two-of-three Class C championship series on May 26. If they lost Thursday, May 28, there’d be no tomorrow.
They needed to put other things out of their minds — the prom, the end of school, social occasions — or risk being dogged by regret.
Recalling his own high school senior-year experience, Puma, who wore his old Westlake shirt while talking to his players, said, simply, “I don’t want that for you.”
The scoreboard at the end of Thursday’s game at North Rockland indicated his words may have hit home.
The Tigers pounded out 15 hits (including five doubles and a home run), stole five bases and drew eight walks while routing Leffell 15-8 to even the Class C series at one game apiece Thursday at North Rockland High School.
Senior hurler Kyle Carney didn’t blow people away, with only one strikeout, but, pitching to contact, he gutted out 6 1/3 innings, allowing eight runs, five earned, on seven hits and four walks to pick up the win.
What it means
Tuckahoe and Leffell will play Sunday at North Rockland for the Section 1 Class C title. The game time is still to be determined, but is listed as 1 p.m. as of the morning of May 29.
Player of the game
Tuckahoe’s Caden Goldberg and Luca Del Conte shared top game honors.
Goldberg had a two-run double and and RBI single. Del Conte, who had two hits and two walks and scored four times, launched a three-run homer that cleared the leftfield fence and clipped part of the scoreboard and fell back on to the field.
Goldberg’s two-out, two-strike double expanded the Tigers’ lead to 6-2 in the second inning. Del Conte’s bomb came the next inning, also came with two outs and expanded the lead to 9-2. Goldberg’s run-scoring single came in the sixth inning and put Tuckahoe up 12-7.
Game highlights and stats
Carney also drove in three runs, Connor Brice had four hits and drove in a pair of runs and scored four times. Rocco Briante had one RBI. Vincent Justino reached base five times via two hits and three walks, He scored twice.
For Leffell, which had beaten Tuckahoe 5-2 two days earlier, starter Jacob Moore suffered the loss. He lasted one-third of an inning, allowing one hit and three walks, He was charged with three earned runs.
Brandon Dittleman came in in relief and went 5 2/3 innings. He gave up 13 hits and walked five in surrendering 12 runs, 11 of them earned.
But he helped himself with his bat, doubling and driving in three runs.
Moore also had two hits (one a triple), a run scored and two driven in. Ari Chinitz and Asher Bayarin also both drove in a run for the Lions.
They said it
“We lost this, the season’s over. Not good for the seniors. We couldn’t make this their last game ever,” Del Conte said.
Looking forward to Sunday, Goldberg said, “I think we’re going to take it. That’s it.”
“We’re not going to stop,” Del Conte added.
Nancy Haggerty covers sports for The Journal News/lohud.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: One more game needed in C, Section 1 baseball championships scoreboard
Reporting by Nancy Haggerty, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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