It was early November at Sayen Park in Hamilton; a time when baseball is usually an afterthought amongst West Windsor and Plainsboro residents.
But lo and behold, in the same park that housed so many Nottingham Little League champions, the West Windsor-Plainsboro 9U Warriors were on hand to root for the 8U Warriors in the USABL West Division championship game. Following that contest, the 8Us stuck around for their older guys title game in the same division.
Both fan bases were rewarded, as the 8Us won 2-1 in extra innings, and the 9Us claimed a 7-3 victory.
“A lot of the 9Us were there rooting us on and all of our kids wanted to stay to root on the 9Us after us,” 8U manager Mike Garzio said. “All the kids know each other because they are all West Windsor Little League players, and the vast majority go to WW-P schools. Some of our boys play USABL tournaments with the boys on their team.”
Rob Cianchetti, the 9U manager, felt it was a grand day for baseball in the WW-P District, but also a little stressful knowing his team had to match what the 8Us did.
“It was so awesome watching the 8U kids win their game and seeing the boys from both teams high five each other as they exited and we entered the dugout,” Cianchetti said. “I was a little worried our side might feel pressure after watching the younger kids win but they were as focused during warmups as I’ve seen them in five seasons.
“I can’t even tell you the last time a team from West Windsor won a league championship so for both teams to win on the same field — one following the other — was just incredible.”
Coupled with the West Windsor-centric NJ Pirates winning a travel tournament several months earlier, it marked a continuing upward trend in WW-P youth baseball.
The 8Us finished the fall with a 10-2 overall record and 7-2 in-season. Their playoff run featured victories over the Central Jersey Rebels, Allentown Redbirds Black, and a 2-1 extra-inning win over the Robbinsville Ravens in the final.
Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the sixth, Daniel Shuman’s fielder’s choice plated the tying run. Cole Espinosa, who hurled 3-plus scoreless innings, pitched a scoreless seventh, then drew a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the frame to win it.
Rounding out the team were Jason Jian, Vedant Deshpande, Ahaan Balantrapu, Christian Boden, Ben Guirnalda, Luca Redmond, Nathan Lee, Rachit Garg, Arjan Amar, Max Godeny, Jamie Keeley and Michael Garzio.
“Pitching was our strength,” Garzio said. “We had four or five guys who could consistently throw strikes and give us three innings each game, sometimes four. In our last two playoff games we were pretty evenly matched with Allentown Black and Robbinsville. The difference was they ran out of pitchers and we did not.”
The 8Us have been together since the fall of 2022 and was primarily a developmental team. They won a few games their first season, climbed to slightly under .500 last spring, setting things up for the division title.
Cianchetti started the 9U squad in the fall of 2021 and because the players and parents enjoyed the summer tournaments so much, it was decided to keep the team together in the spring. Much like the 8Us, the team is made up of nearly all West Windsor and Plainsboro residents, with a few Cranbury players sprinkled in.
“It wasn’t my intention to keep the team to only local players, those were just the families we knew at the time from the Little League,” Cianchetti said. “If we didn’t have enough interest to form our own team I likely would have taken my son to one of the nearby Hamilton travel programs, but fortunately the parents and kids were excited to do it and two years later we still have mostly the same families involved.”
Prior to this year, the Warriors reached the semifinals in two of their four seasons. This year it won the division with an 8-1 record during the regular season, defeated Centercourt 13-3 in the semis and topped Sayen Park, 7-3, in the finals to finish 10-1.
Mikey Antolino allowed three runs and fanned 10 in the title game and Levi Mittendorf got the save. Antolino, William Cianchetti and Derek Schladt each had three hits to lead a 13–hit attack.
The team’s top three pitchers were Antolino, Mittendorf. and Garrett Chaita. The catchers were Cianchetti and Cole Barna, while the infield had Chaita and Brandon Lau on first, Aiden Castaldo and Kashi Chigurupati at second, Schladt, Cole Barna, and Parker Ciancia on third and Mittendorf and Antolino at short. The outfield included Logan Hutchinson, James Taylor, Jamal Singletary, Ciancia, Matthew Shrank, Chigurupati and Sid Pradeep.
“As a coach I like to stress the importance of fielding, especially at the youth level, but I have to admit it was our hitting and base-running that set us apart this season,” Cianchetti said. “Across the entire lineup every player consistently put the ball in play and hustled around the bases. A close second would have to be our pitching with our top three starters doing a great job shutting down opposing teams.”
In looking at the overall picture of how these youthful successes could impact the high school teams in later years, each manager had an interesting take.
“When you visit our local Little League practice facility you see flags and trophies for various team championships but they’re all from, like, 10 to 15 years ago,” Cianchetti said. “I don’t know all the history of youth baseball in our town but it seems like we used to regularly compete with the top teams from Hamilton but then at some point participation began to decline.
“If the success of our Warriors teams and the NJ Pirates is a sign of a baseball resurgence, I think that would be a really great thing for our community. My experience with baseball in West Windsor with my two sons has been overwhelmingly positive and I really want other families in town to share in that. Almost all of the many friends my boys play and hang out with today they met through Little League over the years and the same is true for the local friends of my wife and I too. Youth baseball can be such a great way to meet your neighbors.”
Garzio is taking a wait-and-see approach to the future. He has been on the front lines of high school baseball. A teacher at High School South, he also served as Don Hutchinson’s assistant for seven years.
“Baseball in Mercer County is tough,” he said. “The success in terms of wins and losses seems to come in waves in WW-P. I helped coach teams that struggled to be competitive and teams that were very competitive including a county championship in 2014. Some kids lived and breathed baseball and went on to be fine college players and even professional baseball players like Ben Ruta, Paul Balestrieri and Matt McCann.
“The teams that were more successful had players with deeper connections with one another. They were friends and teammates and had been since they were small kids. Baseball teams have been the closest thing I’ve had to family outside of my own family and I try to preach that to the boys even at eight years old. If they see each other as brothers and motivate each other and hold one another accountable to work hard they will have a higher likelihood of success.”
Garzio admitted that because the players are so young, it’s impossible to predict how this will play out by the time they reach middle school and high school. He feels the Little League district tournament will be a better gauge due to the fact the talent level is closer among teams.
Noting that the feeder system is not comparable to that of Hamilton — which has four little league programs as opposed to one in West Windsor — he feels participation is more important than results at the high school level.
“Success in my eyes would be three levels of baseball (freshman, JV, varsity) at both high schools,” he said. “Wins and losses are lower on my list of priorities.”
While the future is unpredictable, Cianchetti feels that these two teams, plus the NJ Pirates, give WW-P baseball something to build upon.
“Some travel baseball programs have yearly try-outs with 50 or more kids from all different towns and that definitely creates very talented teams on the field,” he said. “But I don’t think they come close to the off- field relationships our teams have. No doubt it’s a great sign for the future of WW-P baseball that our teams consisting almost entirely of players from the local school district are competing with other teams assembled from much larger player pools that span different towns and districts.”
Competing… and winning.
The WW-P 8U Warriors won the championship in the USABL West Division in November at Sayen Park in Hamilton. Pictured are Jason Jian, Vedant Deshpande, Ahaan Balantrapu, Christian Boden, Ben Guirnalda, Luca Redmond, Nathan Lee, Rachit Garg, Cole Espinosa, Arjan Amar, Daniel Shuman, Max Godeny, Jamie Keeley and Michael Garzio.,
