It was the scene every young baseball player dreams of - bases loaded, two outs, extra innings, league championship game.

On Tuesday May 27, it was Andrew Noe of the Kellenberg Firebirds who made his dream come true, as he smoked a line drive just over the glove of Chaminade right fielder Colin Cashin to score the winning run, sealing the Firebirds' first NSCHSAA championship since 2017 and ending Chaminade's magical playoff run. 

"I knew I was going to come up big there," said Noe after the game. "I just wanted it to be me."

Despite the loss, it was a fantastic postseason for Chaminade. The Flyers nearly ran the table as the fifth seed, finding themselves just a few innings away from taking home the hardware on multiple occasions.

"We could have phoned it in from where we were; I mean, we were .500 basically," said Chaminade head coach Patrick Kemp. "The fact that they rallied around each other to make this playoff push - it speaks volumes, especially being in year one with different coaches and different players." 

The unlikely run began in the opening rounds. As the fifth seed, the Flyers were matched up with the fourth-seeded St. John the Baptist Cougars in their initial playoff game. 

Although they were outhit eight to six, the Flyers came through with base knocks at the right times to secure a 7-4 victory. Leading the charge was Collin Anderson - who tallied four hits and scored four runs, Michael Gardner - whose speed essentially stole two runs, and Cashin. The Flyers also capitalized on some less-than-stellar fielding from the Cougars to pad their lead. 

Anderson's four-hit performance may have been his best all season, as he raised his batting average to a remarkable .554 in the process.

"Knowing I have the ability to perform like that and actually going out there and doing it are two very different things," he said. "I'm glad I was able to put everything together and have a day for my team."

On the mound, Carlos Pereira and Jack Pfeifer managed to control the Cougars' offense. Pereira notched his third win of the season, tossing 5.1 strong innings, while Pfeifer picked up his third save after 1.2 innings in relief. 

Next up for the Flyers was a May 18 matchup with the top-seeded St. Dominic's Bayhawks.

It was a pitching clinic for the first six innings at Farmingdale State College, as Iona commit Luke Lang carried a no-hitter into the fifth for the Bayhawks in a near-flawless performance. He would work into the seventh, allowing a total of three runs (two earned); however, two of those runs scored after he departed the game. On the other side, sophomore Nicholas Sweeney held the Bayhawks to just two runs in four innings of work, while senior Kenneth Meliere Jr. limited St. Dom's to one run in his lone inning on the mound.

Still - thanks to timely hits from Dylan Weinstein, Dominic Muccia, and Connor Ackerman - St. Dom's maintained a 3-1 lead after six innings. 

The top of the seventh was quite a roller coaster. Bayhawks head coach Joe Fusco chose to leave Lang out there for the complete game, even though his pitcher was tiring.

Chaminade's first two hitters reached base thanks to a walk and an error as Lang crossed the 100-pitch mark, but he was able to strike out TJ Bradford for his final out of the day. However, Bradford ran up the pitch count during his tough at-bat, forcing Fusco to go to the 'pen. 

The wheels completely fell off for the Bayhawks after Lang's departure. Ackerman, in for the save, could not find the zone at all, as he walked the first two hitters and threw a wild pitch, scoring a run. Then, he drilled Anderson with an inside fastball to tie the game at three. 

Fusco then brought in Ray Kim, a sophomore hurler who was able to briefly settle the trouble, producing the second out on a ground ball. This left the inning up to a battle between Kim and the Flyers' Nolan Fernandez. With a 3-1 count, the Flyers first baseman scorched a fast-sinking line drive to right field. Weinstein, the Bayhawks outfielder, tried to save the day with a diving catch, but he came up empty. As the ball rolled to the wall, the runners circled the bases in jubilation and Fernandez ended up at third with a triple, his Flyers now ahead, 6-3.

Gardner and Cashin each added another run before the inning's end, putting the Flyers up, 8-3.

In the bottom of the inning, Pfeifer set the Bayhawks down in order to lock down the thrilling win.

"Breaks went our way," reflected Coach Kemp of the seventh-inning comeback. "We've been on the other end of that all season, so it's good to be on this end today."

There was now one obstacle standing in the way of the Flyers and a berth in the league finals - a May 19 showdown with the Kellenberg Firebirds, the only team who swept the Crimson and Gold during the regular season. 

The Firebirds drew first blood in the second on a Carson Fessler two-out single. However, the dynamic duo of Pereira and Pfeifer would keep the Firebirds off the scoreboard the rest of the way. Pereira tossed 5.1 innings of four-hit, one-run ball for the win, while Pfeifer pitched the final 1.2 innings for the save.

The Flyer offense ground out four runs off Kellenberg starter Eric Ressegger. The fourth inning was the difference, as an RBI double by Gardner and a two-run single by Cashin put the Flyers ahead by two.

Daniel Nawrocki put his stamp on the final few innings of this winner's bracket playoff game. Leading off the fifth, the Chaminade center fielder launched a towering solo homer that just stayed inside the left-field foul pole. Then, in the bottom of the sixth, he robbed Richie LaVacca of what could have been a game-tying hit by laying out to snag the line drive just before it hit the ground. 

If Nawrocki had missed LaVacca's liner, it could have rolled all the way to the wall, which may have enabled LaVacca and the two runners who were already on base to score. Nawrocki acknowledged this after the game: "It was a risk. I got a really good jump on it, I went with my gut, I was confident with myself, and then I went and got what I wanted."

With the victory, Chaminade advanced to the league championship series, held at Hofstra University on Memorial Day. Kellenberg dropped into the loser's bracket to take on St. Dominic's, and with a rematch against Chaminade on the line for both teams, the Firebirds crushed the Bayhawks, 14-6. 

The crowd was antsy with anticipation as the two Marianist rivals met in the best-of-three championship series for the first time since 2022, when Chaminade took home the title in three games.

The first game was a pitcher's duel, as Sweeney and the future Miami Hurricane Jack Durso dominated hitters all day. However, Durso struggled a bit with his command at times, and Chaminade pounced. In the third, Fernandez smacked a single to left to score the speedy Anderson from second. Later, in the fifth, Jake Madsen poked a soft liner just over Durso's glove to drive home Cashin with the go-ahead run. 

The Flyers earned the game-one triumph by a score of 2-1, as Pfeifer earned another save by stranding the tying run on second base in the seventh. 

In his two playoff starts, Sweeney went toe-to-toe with two of the league's best pitchers in Lang and Durso, demonstrating his sky-high potential. 

"I knew they were going to be on the fastball," admitted Sweeney. "I was just trying to mix in offspeed and let them get themselves out."

An hour later, the teams retook the field for game two. This time around, it was Kellenberg's pitching staff that stole the show, as Ressegger and Kevin Prosceo quieted the Flyers bats to even the series. 

The Firebirds took the lead in the top of the fifth and held on from there. With two outs, LaVacca banged a double over Nawrocki's head in center field, chasing home Jaden Valdez from first to make it 2-1.

In the sixth, Noe swatted a sacrifice fly, his second RBI of the day, to push the lead to two. Then, with two outs, Lucas Vamvaketis rolled a slow ground ball down to first; unfortunately for the Flyers, the ball struck the base and kicked away from Fernandez, allowing Vamvaketis to reach and Noe to score. This run,which seemed insignificant at the time, would prove to be the difference in the game. 

Chaminade nearly mounted a comeback against Prosceo in the seventh. Anderson and Vaughan Steinert each had run-scoring hits, trimming the deficit to one. However, Prosceo buckled down, getting Cashin to fly out and Daniel Anicito to ground out with the tying run at third, sending the series to a decisive third game as Kellenberg survived a 4-3 nailbiter. 

The two teams returned to Hofstra the next day to settle the championship series in front of an anxious, but boisterous crowd.

Chaminade struck first, posting a run off Kellenberg starter Chris Parisi in each of the two innings. It was Cashin who registered both RBI, driving home Anderson with a ground out in the first and Nawrocki with a two-out single in the second.

Despite the early struggles, Parisi twirled a fabulous game. The junior went seven innings, yielding only four hits and those two runs. He had to work around seven walks, but three double plays made it a lot easier for him. 

Kellenberg ambushed Chaminade starter Meliere in the third to even the score, as Fessler and Coscia each contributed a triple, while Noe added a single. However, the Firebirds left the go-ahead run on third when Meliere masterfully sidestepped even more damage to finish his day on a high note.

Pfeifer came on in relief of Meliere to start the fourth and pitched valiantly. In his longest outing of the year - 4.2 innings - the usual-closer scattered five hits and allowed a single run; unfortunately for him, this run made the difference in the game. Nonetheless, it was quite the performance from one of Chaminade's best arms.

Kellenberg first had a golden opportunity to win the game in regulation. In the bottom of the sixth, Noe stepped up to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded courtesy of a pair of walks and a base hit. This time around, he grounded out to the second baseman, Madsen, but Noe would redeem himself with the hit of a lifetime just two innings later. 

Kellenberg's Evan Williams picked up the win, throwing a scoreless eighth inning on nine pitches. He and Parisi worked together to silence the Chaminade bats in a major way, as the Flyers amassed a mere four hits in the win-or-go-home showdown. 

"I'm grateful to get the opportunity to play for a championship, alongside such a great group of guys," said Anderson. "As sad as it was, everybody was there for each other at the end of the game."

Chaminade's regular season was oftentimes pedestrian, as evidenced by their 11-11 record. They did not lose more than two games in a row, but they did not win more than three in a row, either. This kept the Flyers in the middle of the NSCHSAA pack all season.

In terms of individual performances, those of Anderson, Pereira, Fernandez, and Pfeifer stood out most. With regards to games, comeback thrillers against Holy Trinity, St. John the Baptist, and St. Anthony's were among the most memorable.

"I'll remember how we all came together when our coaches and players needed to," added Anicito. "We were always there as one varsity squad."