Photo: Frankie Debari
BY: QUINN BURGESS, STAFF WRITER
On Nov. 2, the St. Bonaventure men’s club baseball team beat the University of Rochester 5-2 to win the New York Championship after an enticing and anticipating season.
This team had early success after winning the first four games of the season, only to face reigning champion University of Buffalo. Bonaventure’s first of only two losses came from Buffalo, but it ultimately tied the series after a 12-11 Bonaventure win.
Senior captain Connor Wieczorek said he knew the Bonnies were a championship-level team before the season even started.
“I remember after the first day of tryouts talking to Ben [Confer] and saying, ‘This is going to be our year man,’” Wieczorek said. “Accountability [was our motto]. We would face our mistakes and move on from them; this is really what helped us.”
Through 10 games, the Bonaventure club baseball team had a record of 8-2, and knocked in 44 runs, propelling them to the playoffs.
For co-captain Ben Confer, this season was all business — championship or bust, he said.
“We had nothing on our minds besides running it back to another championship,” Confer said “Every guy we had on our roster wanted to win; nobody was selfish, and everybody pushed each other. If you put people like that in a setting where their best qualities are shown, good things are bound to happen.”
The morning of Nov. 2, is a day both captains said they will look back on for years. It was a cold Auburn morning, never reaching above 40 degrees outside. In the third inning, Confer was due up with the bases loaded. After a first-pitch fastball, Confer put the ball deep into the left-center gap to score the first two runs of the game.
“[This was] my greatest baseball moment,” Confer said.
However after the third inning, Rochester tied the game at two runs apiece. The game remained tied until the sixth inning, when Wieczorek came up big in a bases-loaded two-out situation. He hit a curveball deep into the outfield, clearing the bases with a double. The runs made the score 5-2, where Bonaventure would hold on to win the championship.
burgesqg24@bonaventure.edu
