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Sports

Coast 12-Year Old Little League Drops Crucial Game to East Meadow

Coast fell to a 2-2 record with one game.

The Massapequa Coast 12-year old Williamsport Little League took a big hit at their hopes of repeating as Long Island champions on Wednesday night with a 3-1 loss to East Meadow at Burns Park. The District 32 champion Mustangs advanced to 3-1 with the win, while Coast falls to 2-2 after a close 2-0 loss to Bayport/Blue Point on Tuesday night.

Along with West Islip, Coast has given up a Sectional tournament-low five runs in four games. But they produced just one combined run in their two losses to East Meadow and Bayport/Blue Point.

"Despite the loss, our pitching did great, but they had a great pitcher also," said Massapequa Coast head coach Brian Schirmacher. "We just needed to find a timely hit and it would have made the difference here."

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East Meadow took an early lead in the bottom of the first inning after Joey Minucci hit an RBI single followed by an RBI groundout from Robbie Callaghan off of pitcher Teddy Turano to push the score to 2-0. Turano pitched all five innings for Coast, striking out four batters.

In the next at-bat for Coast, Albie Fanara hit a solo home run to centerfield to cut the score to 2-1. The momentum seemed to be shifting after Fanara threw out Tyler Scheer trying to advance to second base for the final out of the second inning.

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However, Mustangs’ pitcher Ryan Wallstedt continued his solid work on the mound. In 4 2/3 innings, he gave up just three total hits while striking out 10 batters.

In the bottom of the fifth inning, Marcus Kabigting added an insurance run with a solo home run of his own to cap the score at 3-1. Minucci came in to pitch for the final 1 1/3 innings for East Meadow to close out the win and potentially clinch a spot in the championship round barring a win in their final game.

"We came in knowing that their pitching was going to be good, but we matched them inning for inning. Ryan [Wallstedt] just threw a really good game and had his change-ups and curveballs working well," said East Meadow coach John Hogan. "We had timely hitting here, but for our next game, we pride ourselves on taking it one game at a time." 

Massapequa Coast will play the District 34 champion and undefeated West Islip (4-0) in their final Pool Play game on Friday, July 22 at 6:00 p.m. at Otsego Park in Dix Hills, NY. East Meadow moves on to play North Shore also on Friday at 5:45 p.m. at North Shore Complex in Rocky Point, NY. 

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