Johnston Baseball Making Magical Playoff Run
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
It was just a season ago that the Johnston High School baseball team was raising the Division II championship trophy at McCoy Stadium. A year later, Johnston is in Division I and making some noise as the seventh seed out of the North Division.
The Panthers upset the top two seeds in its bracket in the first two games of its playoff run, defeating second-seeded South Kingstown 7-6 in extra innings, before beating third-seeded Cranston West 7-5, making Johnston the only unbeaten team in its bracket.
Johnston was able to make their run that much more impressive on Sunday, taking down second-seeded South Kingstown again by a score of 4-1, punching its ticket to the Division I Final Four.
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Although Johnston's ace pitcher James Picchi is out for the rest of the season with an injury, Johnston's pitching staff has been able to persevere, getting big contributions from Joe Bongiovanni and Steve Perfetto. Bongiovanni picked up the wins in each of Johnston's first two playoff games, pitching in relief of Perfetto against South Kingstown in the first round, before going the distance against Cranston West in the second round. Perfetto pitched 5.2 innings in the winners bracket final game against South Kingstown, picking up the win to send the Panthers to the Final Four.
It should be interesting to see how the absence of Picchi will affect Johnston in the semifinals, however, as the Panthers will draw the top overall seed Bishop Hendricken in a best-of-three semifinal series. Picchi went a perfect 9-0 last season, en route to Johnston winning the Division II title.
Johnston will kick off its series with Hendricken at 6:30pm on Thursday at McCarthy Field in West Warwick.
