SUNY Niagara has fielded a baseball team since 1967. In that time, it has accomplished a lot of noteworthy things and had a lot of deep postseason runs.
Before 2012, the Thunderwolves had never made it to the NJCAA Division III College World Series national championship game. In the 14 years since, it has made it four more times. Now, there’s more history for the program, a national championship.
On Wednesday in Johnson City, Tennessee, under the lights of TVA Credit Union Stadium, SUNY Niagara made program history by defeating Rowan College South Jersey-Gloucester 12-8 to capture the team’s first national championship.
The win also ends RCSJ’s three-year reign atop the NJCAA Division III level.
The story of the game was one of toughness for the Thunderwolves, who got off to an incendiary start, taking a 10-2 lead in the third inning but then had to hold off a Roadrunners charge to get the win.
After the Roadrunners trimmed their deficit to 10-6 in the sixth inning, the Thunderwolves turned to one of their leaders in Niagara Wheatfield graduate Cameron Guarin to hit an RBI double and extend the lead to 11-6. The squad from Sanborn would add one more in the bottom of the seventh on a Cooper Rossano sacrifice fly to push the lead out to 12-6 and that proved to be enough.
In the top of the ninth, RCSJ-Gloucester had a chance. It was down by four runs and still had an out to play with when they had Jayden Rossado, a freshman hitting .388 come up to the dish trying to keep his team alive. On the third pitch of the at-bat, Rossado popped out to SUNY Niagara third baseman Mike Schaefer.
And by the time the ball came down in Schaefer’s glove, it became hard to tell which flew higher, the ball from Rossado or the hats and gloves being flung into the air with total abandonment by the Thunderwolves.
The Thunderwolves finished the day with 14 hits from eight players, with Cam Gravelle, Cooper Rossano, Dalton Harper, Gruarin and Cooper Prizel each having multi-hit days. Harper led that group in his final game before he heads to Penn State by going 3-for-4.
In the final game of his Thunderwolves career, Keegan Bazinet was given the ball and he threw six innings, giving up six runs on 11 hits while walking two hitters and striking out five.
He was relieved by a fellow sophomore, Mike Munzert, who pitched 2/3 of an inning, giving up one unearned run on one hit while walking one and striking out two. The final pitcher of the day was Cooper Polovich who went two innings, giving up one run on one hit while striking out two hitters.
The championship gives SUNY Niagara two national championships this year after the men’s wrestling team won the national championship on March 9.