2014 Perfect Game High School Baseball Preview Index | Northeast Region Preview
The baseball roosts in both the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) and in the Ivy Preparatory School League (IPSL) have been ruled with an iron fist for nearly a decade by a school that was established more than 160 years ago.
Poly Prep Country Day School, known familiarly as Poly Prep, sits on an urban campus in the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., that in days long gone may have been a short trolley ride to now demolished Ebbets Field, once home of the borough’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers.
Today, the best high school baseball in the state of New York – and perhaps the nine-state Perfect Game Northeast Region – is played by the Blue Devils at venerable Poly Prep. The program has been under the guidance of alumnus Matt Roventini (class of 1992) for the past 11 years and has become the preeminent power in both the 196-school NYSAIS and the eight-school Ivy Prep League.
With four straight NYSAIS championships, six in the last eight years – the Blue Devils finished as runner-up in both 2009 and 2010 – and seven in 13 years, a rich history has been established, even if it’s relatively recent. The motto for the program is the well-worn but still relevant “Tradition Doesn’t Graduate” and every year Roventini welcomes in a new set of players that will be asked to carry the torch.
“We’ve had some great kids come through here in my 11 years, and not just from the baseball aspect but as people and students,” Roventini told PG during a telephone conversation last week. “The type of kid that we get here, or we try to get here, is top caliber and not just as a baseball player but academically and socially.
“I’ve never in my 11 years run into a disciplinary issue where somebody had to sit because of behavior or grades or anything along those lines,” he said. “The quality of the kids that we deal with here is exceptional.”
Poly Prep is a small school with about 500 students in grades 9 through 12, so Roventini doesn’t find it necessary to hold tryouts and make uncomfortable personnel cuts. He preaches quality not quantity, and if the kids are willing to work hard, put the time in, become dedicated and buy into the system, then there’s a place for them on the roster.
And once a player is on the roster, he quickly comes to understand the responsibility that comes with the appointment. Even for a team that has only four seniors on its varsity roster, the expectation to win a fifth straight NYSAIS championship and climb up the national rankings is very real. The Blue Devils open the season at No. 46 in the PG High School National Preseason Top-50 Rankings.
“We have the talent, the work ethic and, most importantly, the coaching staff that is needed to just keep this going,” standout junior shortstop Daniel Bakst told PG last week. “I really feel confident in our guys and Coach Roventini and all the other coaches, and we really feel like we’ve got a great shot at doing it again this year.”
Bakst would not go so far as to say that the baseball program is the pace-setter at Poly Prep, simply because so many of the school’s other athletic programs are so strong. This is the New York City, after all, and after the Yankees and the Mets, interest in baseball kind of falls off.
“We are at the center but not quite in the spotlight,” he said. “It’s not what you’d think just because of the popularity of baseball, but I do think we definitely deserve that respect.”
AS A PROGRAM FROM THE NORTHEAST, POLY PREP FACES many obstacles, the biggest one being a nationwide misperception about the quality of play in the region. Folks who live in the warm-weather states where baseball can be played in the great outdoors the year-around can’t comprehend how a program that is forced indoors for at least half of the year can possibly be competitive on a national scale.
“We want to be considered alongside some of the best, and it doesn’t matter if we’re inside or outside,” Roventini said. “I always used the expression, ‘Get better by one percent every day’ and by the end of the year you’re going to be a hell of a lot better baseball player and better team, really.”
The Blue Devils return a boatload of talent from a team that finished 26-3-1 in 2014. At least seven key contributors are back, including senior right-hander Andrew Ehrenberg and senior second baseman Isaiah Russell, neither of whom have committed to a college yet. Ehrenberg went 8-0 with a 0.95 ERA as a junior, and Russell hit .353 (24-for-68) with 18 RBI, 23 runs scored and 14 stolen bases.
The talent pool in the junior and sophomore classes runs especially deep, led by the juniors Bakst and shortstop/outfielder Anthony Prato.
Perfect Game ranks Bakst, a Stanford commit, as the No. 64 national prospect in his class. He hit .321 (27-for-84) with a home run, two triples, 11 doubles, 28 RBI, 24 runs and 11 stolen bases. Bakst has attended 23 PG events since 2011 and was named to the Top Prospect List at the 2013 PG Junior National Showcase.
Prato’s sophomore season was through the roof. He hit .456 (47-for-103) with eight extra-base hits, 18 RBI, 45 runs and 34 stolen bases. His hits, runs and stolen base totals were all team-highs. Junior right-hander Tyler Wincig is also back after finishing 4-1 with a 2.07 ERA as a soph.
A pair of Poly Prep sophomores, Nicholas Storz and Pat DeMarco, are two of the best in the country in the class of 2017.
Storz is a 6-foot-6, 245-pound right-hander ranked No. 17 nationally (No. 1 in New York) who flashes a 91 mph fastball and was 7-1 with a 2.28 ERA and 51 strikeouts in 43 innings as a freshman; he also hit .273 with 10 extra-base hits – including a home run – counted among the 16 hits he collected.
DeMarco is a right-handed swinging outfielder ranked No. 93 nationally (No. 3 N.Y.) who hit .284 with eight extra-base hits, 20 RBI and 19 runs.
“We have kids who are ‘baseball players’ and that’s how they identify themselves,” Roventini said. “They’re proud to be really good at it … and they buy into the whole idea that it’s OK to be really, really good at baseball and to identify yourself as that.”
That said, Roventini insists he doesn’t build his Blue Devils’ teams around his best players but instead around what he calls his “supplemental” players, the guys who maybe hit in the second half of the order. At a place like Poly Prep, those players are very good, if not quite elite, and they provide the foundation needed to build a championship-caliber club.
“They do their job well and they help complement each other exceptionally well,” he said. “I think that’s a big thing for us, that our guys see that. They know that it’s not about three (players), it’s not about four, it’s not about five; it’s about the collective whole of 17.”
Two of Roventini’s former players are now playing in the minor leagues. J.J. Franco, a 2010 Poly Prep graduate and the son of former big-leaguer John Franco, was a 38th-round pick of the Atlanta Braves out of Brown University in 2014 and Kevin Heller, class of 2008, was a 40th-round pick of the Boston Red Sox out of Amherst College in 2012.
Roventini is convinced that as many as six or seven more of his former or current players will follow those two into professional baseball in the coming years, either right out of Poly Prep or after three or four years in college.
“That’s pretty exciting given that we’re a small, private, academic school; it’s exciting to know those type of kids are out there,” he said.
POLY PREP IS NOT A BOARDING SCHOOL BUT UTILIZES AN EXTENSIVE system of buses to bring in students from all five of New York City’s boroughs: Brooklyn, Staten Island, Manhattan, Yonkers and Queens. Past baseball rosters have included kids from New Jersey, as well.
“I do go look and try to find some of the best kids during the summertime; that’s not a secret,” Roventini said. “I’m very particular about who I find but I don’t even ask how good (of a ballplayer) they are until I get a report card in my hand. The first thing I do is make sure they’re academically the right kid before I spend any time or energy.”
The Blue Devils play a very demanding schedule away from their play in the Ivy Prep League. They’ll face fellow Northeast powers Don Bosco and Delbarton down in New Jersey and George Washington up in the Bronx. They are also going on a 10-day trip to Bradenton, Fla., to compete in a tournament at the prestigious IMG Academy.
Their first opponent in Florida will be traditionally strong Westminster Christian School out of Miami. The game will be the Poly Prep’s season-opener; it is game No. 17 Westminster Christian.
“It’s going to be hard, but that’s OK,” Roventini said. “It’s a challenge that we want because regardless of our success we’re still perceived as a team that won’t be out on the field until March, and that’s just the nature of the beast, but our kids will step up to the challenge. They want to say, ‘Hey listen, the Northeast teams can play with those teams down south.’”
Bakst made his first Florida trip last year and said he was actually surprised at how well the team played, losing only one game.
“We just have the guys to compete down there, and I know for me personally I love going down south and playing against those kids; I love playing against better competition,” he said. “We have all the confidence in the world when we go down to Florida and face guys that have been playing since February.”
Roventini purposely makes the scheduled as difficult as possible because he feels his players have worked hard enough to earn the challenges it produces. “They walk around sometimes with a big chip on their shoulder,” he said. “… Every time we get on a plane and go south, we have a lot to prove because we want to prove to people that we can compete with you.”
After returning from Florida, the Blue Devils will soon get into Ivy Prep League play with games against familiar rivals like Dalton School and Collegiate School from Manhattan, and Fieldston School and Riverdale Country School in the Bronx.
As a Poly Prep grad, Roventini is intimately familiar with these neighborhood rivalries, these battles of the boroughs, if you will. And the players have come to appreciate the passion he has passed onto them.
“I think Coach Roventini is the basis for why Poly Prep has been so good for the past (eight) years. He’s the reason why the (baseball) culture has blossomed so much,” Bakst said. “Poly Prep is a very athletic-oriented school and we have great athletics all year-around, but with our team it starts with a great coaching staff and Coach Roventini has really made that possible.”
THE GOOD FOLKS THAT LIVE AND PLAY IN THE PG NORTHEAST REGION may not believe it at the moment, but one day soon the snow will melt away and baseball will be played outdoors, in the sunshine.
The Poly Prep Blue Devils will be there front and center, representing a relatively small school while knowing their position in the pecking order has changed. When Roventini arrived 11 years ago, the Blue Devils were the hunters; today they are the hunted.
The expectation is to win a ninth straight Ivy Prep League title and a fifth straight NYSAIS championship. Those are the two biggest pieces of the three-part puzzle, with a third piece being a steady climb up those PG national rankings.
“We would not be pleased if we did not win our league and our (state) championship; that’s our expectation,” Roventini said. “We have a lot of kids that are very talented and the reality is the big players are going to have play big in the big games. There is going to be pressure on them to play well.
“There are expectations of them individually and as a team that they have to play well and I know they’re willing to step up to it.”
For the top seniors like Ehrenberg and Russell, this will be their last shot at prep glory. For the top underclassmen like Bakst, Prato, Wincig, Storz and DeMarco, the season will be another opportunity to prove that Poly Prep still rules the roost when it comes to New York high school baseball.
“It’s a very tightly knit team,” Bakst said. “We don’t have a lot of seniors but everybody in their own sense is a leader and we’ve got great leaders all across the board, and I think that speaks to the character of this team.
“It won’t be a success if we are not champions by the end of the year,” he concluded. “That’s how it is and that’s how it should be.”