South Windsor 11U Little League team makes second-straight trip to Eastern Regional
Winning the state tournament and advancing to win the Eastern Regional was the experience of a lifetime for the South Windsor 10-and-under Little League team last year. Now, the same group competing at the 11-and-under level has a chance to do it again.
Losing just three players and adding two more, undefeated South Windsor beat Simsbury by mercy rule, 12-2 after four innings, in the July 24 state final in Stamford and a berth in the Eastern Regional in Beverly, Mass. The team is 21-0 in state competition over the last two seasons.
“It’s great,” said coach Joe Caputa, whose son Dominic is on the team. “I’m not sure when he’ll realize how unbelievable these memories are, but he will down the road. It’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s a great group of kids, ballplayers, families, coaches — we love spending time with each other and grinding it out for four months. They’ve spent a lot of time together, have built some very strong friendships, so it’s just great to see them together.”
South Windsor Little League 10U team wins New England, Eastern Regional championships
The team, managed by Seth Falco with Caputa and Matt Durbois as assistants, raised over $13,000 last year with a GoFundMe page to help cover travel, hotel and food expenses. They received nearly $7,000 in donations on the site this year on top of money raised from a bucket drop fundraiser at Stop-and-Shop in South Windsor and a car wash in town on Sunday.
“Winning states is the pressure,” Caputa said. “That’s the ultimate goal. This next week in Beverly, Mass., this is all gravy. This is all fun.”
The team has been powered by its two pitching aces, Lyle Dresser and Zach Powers.
“They just come up there and they pitch like it’s their last game,” Caputa said. “It’s just amazing to watch what they’d done last year and continue to do this year, especially when we haven’t even played our best brand of baseball yet. We started to get there in the championship versus Simsbury; we’re a team that should be pushing double-digits on offense every game.”
Jacob Zande pitched all four innings in the state championship game, earning the victory.
South Windsor will compete in the Metro Regional this week, opening pool play against New Jersey on Tuesday night, New York on Wednesday and Rhode Island on Thursday. The regional champion, the final stage for the age group, will be crowned over the weekend.
“We’re going to get challenged right off the bat and we’ll see how we do. We’ll be ready to battle but we know those are not going to be easy games,” Caputa said. “These big games, it really tools them up for their future baseball competition because they don’t feel that pressure. They just go out there and have fun.”
