“You could just see right away the hard-nose type of player that he was, hustling all over the place, making plays. “Once we began our drills, Jake immediately stood out to us,” Sawtelle said. Ironically, the player who stood out above the rest was, in a physical sense, the smallest: Plymouth’s Jake Cassidy. In the three years we’ve been together, we’ve only lost two or three.”Īfter seeking suggestions from the parents, Sawtelle put together a list of four kids in January and put them to the test. The thinking behind that method is that we try as best as we can to keep the core of the team together and it keep it a good working environment. We just take recommendations from parents. “At the end of the year, we may have one or two kids drop off but we don’t put the word out that we’re looking for players. “We don’t typically have open tryouts,” Sawtelle explained.
If he could find help for the team, he was all for it. But the Bulldogs coach wasn’t just looking for end of the bench players. Looking at his roster as the 2012 season started, Sawtelle also saw that his team could use a player or two to fill out the roster. We had been going to the JunglePlex but they did away with a lot of their baseball stuff and we needed a place to go.” He’s just a super, super guy, who really loves the program and came up in a big spot when we needed it. And he turned his warehouse into a sports facility and let us put it to use whenever we wanted. “He is a huge baseball fan and a big fan of the program. “Tony has been great for us,” Sawtelle explained. Lagreca has customized the warehouse, turning it into a sports facility. Lagreca, a local businessman who owns Oreck Commercial Sales in Plymouth, allowed the team use of a warehouse he owns in the Plymouth Industrial Park. This past season, the Bulldogs got an early start on activities thanks in part to Tony Lagreca. Sawtelle explained the sheer amount of baseball the team plays – picking up practices in January and playing the season from March to July – gives these youngsters an edge on their classmates. “And playing up here certainly adds to that and I think you can definitely tell what kids are playing AAU.” “When you look around these towns, these kids…they’re all the standouts in their town leagues,” Sawtelle explained.
The Bulldogs opened the season with a roster of 11 that included the Four Horsemen, Shawn McCarthy of Middleborough, Jimmy Dolan of Whitman, as well as six players from Hanson: Matt Stanish, Cam Thoms, Sam Henrie, Korey Howard and Ryan Sawtelle. But this year they really bonded as a team.”
In three years, I’ve been able to watch these kids grow as players and as individuals, and they’ve all made significant progress. “That’s been the special thing about this group. “I’ve had this team since they were 10 years old, so this is our third year together,” Bulldogs Coach Scott Sawtelle explained. Playing for the Bay State Bulldogs AAU Under-12 baseball team this summer, Carver natives Bobby Demeo, Paul Kittredge, Tyler Halunen and Nick Sylvester combined to make up the Four Horsemen – a group of young stars whose talent the Bulldogs rode to their first ever New England AAU (NEAAU) Super Division pennant.Įmbarking on a 32-game season, a collection of ballplayers from Carver, Plymouth, Whitman, Hanson and Middleborough finished with a 20-11-1 mark as they traveled throughout the Northeast playing in tournaments as close to home as Wareham and as far away as Long Island, NY and Providence, RI.
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