A winning season and broken pitching record are already in the books as Head Coach Chris Scisciani (“Scis”), senior pitcher Colin Boldin and the Rocket Varsity baseball team strive for a league title.

Scis is trying to lead his team (whose record is 10-5-1 as of press time) to a league victory. 

“Our goal is to win 20 baseball games this year,” he said. “Obviously, we want to win the league. We kinda put ourselves in a hole. We have [five] losses in the league right now [as of April 27], but if other teams start knocking each other off we handle business and win out in the league. We should easily win over 15 games but we keep saying our goal is 20. We will be right there if we don’t make the mistakes that we made yesterday.”

Scis was referring to the April 19 matchup with Norton, in which the Rockets lost 8-5.

Several players had good starts to the season, Scis said. “Obviously, Colin Boldin, he’s doing a really good job for us pitching wise and playing shortstop.”

Boldin set a new school pitching record with 18 strikeouts against Garfield Heights March 29. 

“It was awesome,” he said “Something I dreamed of. Everything was working. All my pitches were working, my arm felt good, and I had a good mindset going into the game and stuck with the game plan.”

While Scis said he could not quite remember what the previous pitching record was, he thought it was in the 15s.

Boldin suffered an elbow injury earlier in the season but it did not affect his play too much. “It was extremely swollen, and was tender to the touch,” he said, “Luckily it was on my left elbow, so it doesn’t affect me pitching that much. It does, though, affect me hitting, because I have to wear an elbow guard so it doesn’t get hit.”

A senior should set an example and be a leader on and off the field, and this is what Boldin is trying to do. “I want to leave a good mark on the younger guys. Show them what it takes to play college baseball,” he said. “Of course I would love to set records, and have my name in the history books, and it’s awesome I’ve been able to do that. But I want to leave a mark on the younger guys as someone who worked hard and left a good mark on them.”

After this season Boldin will be playing baseball at Capital University, a private college in Columbus. “Playing college baseball is awesome. I’m super excited,” Boldin said. “Really excited for the opportunity, but also nervous. I don’t know what to expect, which makes me nervous, but overall I’m excited.”

Another upperclassman working on leading the team is junior right fielder Maysun Klimak. “It feels great to be an older player on the team and be able to have a leadership role on the team,” Klimak said. “I would also hope that I’m giving the younger players something good to look up to.”

Scis went on to recognize a few other players who have contributed to the team’s success this season. 

“Evan Morris has been a huge build to our pitching staff,” he said. “Also Sean Gates, he’s batting .533 and he chases everything down in the outfield. We have quite a few guys that have stepped in and done a good job, but we have some sleepers that have done really well, too, like Mike Sweet. He’s been hitting the crap out of the ball and pitching really well. We’ve had a really huge team effort….”