EASTPORT – It’s great to see Section XI baseball teams doing well this season! Can’t say the same for some of the professional baseball teams in New York…
Alas, the Sharks at Eastport-South Manor (ESM) are putting on a clinic this season.
The Eastport-South Manor varsity baseball team is a member of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA) and competes in League V. The Sharks are led by 12th-year head coach Jim McGowan. He’s joined in the dugout by John McCaffrey and Taylor Foran. ESM boasts a 15-1-0 record with seven games remaining in the regular season.
The ESM Sharks have a rich program history. To start, their trophy case looks like this: 19-time League Champions, 11-time Suffolk County Champions, 5-time Long Island Champions, and 1986 New York State Champions.
Do I say more? The Sharks are proven winners on the diamond.
“Our pitching has been outstanding. We know our three starters are getting deep into the games. Our relievers are coming in and throwing strikes and getting easy outs. So, our pitching has been the key so far. We consistently hold our opponent down, they don’t score a lot of runs against us, and that’s been a good thing,” said McGowan.
Through 16 games, the Sharks have outscored their opponents 131 to 33. They’ve limited their opponents to single-digit scoring and posted four shutouts. Their highest output this season came in a 17-7 win over East Hampton.
“I think our lineup, one through nine. Everybody from top to bottom, they battle, they grind out at-bats. We have guys who get on base, and we run a lot. I don’t think there’s an easy out in our lineup, which makes us difficult to face,” said McGowan.
Leading the way for the Sharks this season is Senior Brady McGowan, Senior Logan Walsh, and Junior Thomas Gargiulo. All three were chosen as Captains for the 2026 season.
Prior to the season, Newsday named their Top-100 baseball players and the Sharks saw Thomas Gargiulo, Logan Walsh, and Brady McGowan make the list.
Gabe Sikora, a pitcher for the Sharks, is tied for first place in the Section XI standings for wins with five. Memphis Lanier is in the top-10 with four wins as well as top-25 in strikeouts with 24, and Brennan Morrison rounds on the pack with three wins. Mason Gatchalian, a junior, has a team high batting average at .387 with two homeruns and 11 RBIs.
To win another title “would be big,” Coach McGowan told The Messenger.
“Last year, we were coming off a historic season for us; we were 22-0 before we lost in the winner’s bracket final to East Islip. This year we’re 15-1. We’ve done a lot of winning in the last two years, so to win the big one would be the ultimate. League titles are great, but the goal right now is to go get a County Championship. It’s going to be very, very difficult. There’s a lot of good teams in our classification. We have our work cut out for us; it would mean a lot because a lot of these kids have played together since they were eight or nine years old. It would be special for them.”
They run the bases now, but they’ll walk the stage this spring. ESM will graduate seven seniors in 2026. Brady McGowan (Marist), Logan Walsh (Felician), Matt Beardsley (Farmingdale), Nick Calcaterra (Dominican U), Jordan Goldhammer, Ryan Cole, and Brennan Morrison (St. Joseph’s).
“The mindset is kind of what we’ve been doing. Anytime you can pitch and be effective on the mound, you’re always gonna have a chance to win. Because we’re going to face a lot of great pitching in the playoffs, the runs will probably be at a premium. So, if we can keep pitching the way we have, we should have a shot in every game that we play. That would be the key, not to change things suddenly because we’re in the playoffs and try to do things that we’re not capable of doing, or things that we don’t typically do. We try to play the same consistent brand of baseball that we have all season long, that would be the formula.”
