No baseball at Wildwood Catholic this spring

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

Wildwood Catholic Academy will not field a high school baseball team this spring, athletic director Mike Saioni has confirmed.

Saioni said there was not enough interest among the current student body to successfully field a team.

“Not enough kids signed up,” Saioni stated. “I can’t really pinpoint why kids aren’t interested. … We just felt it would have been very risky to try to field a team because it would have been very difficult for us to get through the season. Unfortunately, that’s the situation we’re in right now.”

Saioni said Wildwood Catholic is fully committed to fielding a baseball team for next year. The school had hired a new head coach for this season in Bryan Vasti.

“We have a new coach in place,” Saioni said. “He’s a super guy and he’s going to be a great coach for us. We’re going to look to build for next year.”

Vasti is replacing Jimmy Norris, who stepped down after leading the program for two seasons (2018-19). Like all high school programs across the state, Wildwood Catholic did not play baseball last spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wildwood Catholic was expected to be rather competitive in 2020 before the season was canceled. The Crusaders had numerous players returning from a team that had won a state playoff game for only the third time in program history in 2019. Many of those players were seniors, however.