Heritage-Delray Turning A Negative Into A Positive

Brendan Brundage will be looked upon to be a starting pitcher for the Stallions.

There’s no way to sugar coat the way the American Heritage-Delray team lost its final game of the 2013 season. Manager Carm Mazza put it simply and succinctly: “Last year was a punch in the chin.”

The sophomore-laden Stallions slogged through one of their toughest seasons, finishing 13-14 and losing in the district championship before facing Coral Springs Christian in the regional quarterfinals. American Heritage rallied to tie the score at 1-1 in the top of the seventh before a rainstorm forced the game to be stopped. The rule book said the game had to revert back to the last completed inning, so all of Heritage’s efforts to tie the score didn’t count and Coral Springs Christian walked away with a 1-0 win. Meanwhile, the Stallions walked away disappointed, dejected and dumbfounded.

“It was a letdown I think individually for most of them, and as a program, it was a huge letdown,” Mazza said. “It was the worst year we’ve had to date as a coaching staff, 15 years for the head coach. It was a number of things: a lack of maturity, some injury, we had some leadership issues just because guys were young. If you ask the guys themselves, they’re the first to admit that it was the makeup of the club moreso than any physical issues we had.”

Senior outfielder Todd Isaacs remembers the game well. He had the only hit off Crusaders ace Touki Toussaint going into the seventh.

“Losing is never fun, and especially losing that way like that as we took it,” Isaacs said. “From the get-go, you have to put it on them. You can’t let it be until the last inning and to leave it up to the umpires to call the game like that. We have to put it on every team this year and make sure and secure a win and never let something like that happen again.”

Never letting something like that happen again starts now. It starts with the fall season when the team is busy getting ready to rebound from last year’s malaise and is working hard to make a statement that a program that has been to the state tournament three times since 2006 will not settle for another lackluster season. No way. Won’t happen. Can’t happen. The Stallions, who had just two seniors and three juniors last year, are confident better days are just ahead.

“Being with these guys already a year now, the chemistry may have lacked last year, but now since we’re been together, I think it will be boosted up and we’ll be ready to go,” junior catcher/outfielder Chris Canavan said. “You can tell already this fall.”

The Stallions return several talented sophomores from last year’s team.

Canavan is taking things personally and plans to step up this year to have more of a guiding role among his teammates.

“My goal is to be more of a leader,” he said. “Last year, we kind of lacked a leader. Leadership was kind of down, so I look forward to being more of a leader.”

Isaacs is fired up as well.

“My personal goal this year is to continue playing my game, keep leading this team, make sure we’re doing everything the right way and just to dominate,” he said. “We gel together a lot better than last year. That’s a strength we have now.”

Leadership is so invaluable at a private school program such as American Heritage where players come from different areas of the county. That’s one of the things that hurt Heritage last year, Mazza said.

“You get guys that come from so far away,” Mazza said. “We’ve got guys who live as far as 25, 45 minutes away from one another. They don’t have what some of the public schools have in that notoriety together where they’ve played little league together or they’ve played travel ball together. Some of them have played before they showed up here together, and yes, being a private school has its ups because you get players from so far away, which is a nice luxury. But at the end of the day, it’s harder for them to spend more time away from school with each other. It’s harder for them to do some of the things that teams have to do away from the park to become teams. That’s something we struggle with here at times, and I think because a lot of our seniors who were here weren’t program guys for four years.”

But for what Heritage lacked in leadership, it made up for with a strong group of talented sophomores, including some players who already are Division I commits. In some ways, being young made last year’s disappointment easier to swallow, Mazza said.

“In my opinion, I think it’s better it went sour as sophomores than as seniors,” he said. “I think we made the mistakes early enough in the ballgame so to speak to correct them, and by the end of the game be really in a great place with some kids who have been through some tough times.”

The lessons players such as Isaacs and Canavan learned last year, and the experience they and their fellow young teammates gained, will make this an interesting year for the program. A change in classification from 3A to 4A and a change in district competition will also accomplish this. The Stallions will have to beat some of the tougher small-school programs in the county to contend for a district title. Familiar foe Pope John Paul II — the team that knocked off Heritage in the district final last year — remains in the district in addition to new foes King’s Academy, St. Andrew’s and Cardinal Newman.

“This year is tough,” Canavan said. “King’s is always going to be a good competitor. We lost to them last year. Pope is always going to be a good competitor. It’s always a good game between us. District is going to be tougher. We just have to play harder.”

Jonathan India will among the returning infielders this spring.

Canavan, a three-year starter at catcher, and Isaacs in center field, are two of several players returning from last year. Others include infielders Anthony Hotujec, Lucius Fox, Jonathan India and Tyler Frank, as well as left fielder Christian Bingo. Fox was the top hitter in 2013 with a .359 average, 17 runs and 14 RBI. Hotujec hit .281 and India .291.

Mazza is excited for the year ahead and looking forward to seeing how a more challenging district schedule will play out for his team. It will have strength in pitching with a staff that will include Brendan Brundage, Hunter Bowling, Hotujec, Zach Schneider and Frankie Fernandez. That group will look to make up for the loss of last year’s ace Anthony Delaney, as well as Alec Feigenbaum.

“It’s interesting. It’s nice to bring some new teams to the party,” Mazza said. “The last few years with a three-team district, it gets a little bit repetitive and you see somebody enough times and it’s almost like bad blood that has no business being there and ends up boiling up when you see each other too much. So I think just for the sake of the game, the way the game needs to be played, clean and by the rules, I think it’s good to get some people back into the mix, teams we haven’t seen in years. It’s an exciting time to expand the field and get some new faces in there.”

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