Two Newburyport basketball stars recently made their future plans known.
First, at the beginning of last month, Sam Craig announced his commitment to Westfield State University. The supremely athletic 6-foot-2 point guard will be joining an Owls program that won the MASCAC Tournament championship this year, punching their ticket to the NCAA Division III tournament before falling in the first round.
Craig is a two-sport standout at Newburyport who was named a Daily News Football All-Star this year for his work as a wide receiver (56 rec., 910 yds, 9 TDs), and he’ll most likely be honored on our basketball All-Star team as well. This winter, he averaged 9.4 ppg in helping the Clippers (19-3) win their seventh straight CAL Kinney title and earn the No. 3 seed in the Division 3 state tournament.
Then just this Tuesday, Craig’s teammate and our reigning Daily News MVP announced his future plans as well.
Playing high-level college basketball is still a dream for Carson Gretz, and he’ll be taking a post-grad year at Phillips Exeter Academy next season — while reclassing to 2026 — to help further raise his stock. The versatile 6-foot-5 forward led our area this winter averaging 18.0 ppg with 35 3s, and for the second year in a row was named the CAL Kinney MVP.
Going the post-grad route is an option that has proved fruitful for many athletes, especially in basketball. And specifically at Phillips Exeter, just this past year Beverly native Ryder Frost — a 6-foot-6 small forward — earned himself a commitment to Notre Dame after a dominant season with the Big Red. Then if you want to talk more locally, Newburyport’s own Jack Sullivan was going to play baseball at UMaine, but used a post-grad year at the Berkshire School to earn himself a Division I football scholarship to Bucknell University.
So we’ll see where Gretz ends up after next year.
But in just three seasons playing varsity for Newburyport, he finished with 989 career points.
Tatro named Rookie of the Year
Safe to say that James Tatro acclimated quite well to college hockey.
The Salisbury native and former Triton standout was a freshman at Salem State this year, and was recently named the 2024-25 MASCAC Rookie of the Year. The electric forward finished top-5 in the league in several categories, including goals (15), assists (18), points (33), power play goals (5) and game-winning goals (5). He also helped to guide the Vikings (19-7, 14-4) to their best conference record since 2015-16, as the program reached the MASCAC Tournament quarterfinals before falling in a triple-OT heartbreaker to Fitchburg State.
Tatro will be taking the spring off to work on getting his long-standing hurt shoulder fully healed, but is still seriously considering playing both hockey and lacrosse at Salem State next year as a sophomore.