JAFFREY, N.H. – Bristol, Connecticut here we come …
AGAIN!
For the second straight year, the Salem, New Hampshire Youth Baseball program will be sending its 12-year-old all-star baseball team to the New England Regionals starting this Saturday as they will square off against Maine (1 p.m.) to be aired live on ESPN+ from the Bristol Little League Headquarters.
On Sunday afternoon, the 12’s made quick work of its North Manchester/Hooksett opponents with a 10-0 four-inning shortened game to sweep the best-out-of-three series and capture the New Hampshire State Championship title.
After making nine trips and over 60 total hours from their homes to Jaffrey, New Hampshire, the 12’s finished 11-1 between pool/district/championship play, including outscoring teams 127-16. That dominance earned the team its third straight state championship, winning previous titles as 10-year-olds in 2022 and 11-year-olds last year.
After winning the state title last year, the 11’s went on to play in the New England Regionals held in Rhode Island, finishing 1-2. While they fell short there, last year’s 12-year-old team fell two wins shy of advancing to Williamsport, the home of the Little League World Series. The team finished 2-2, losing both games to the eventual NE Champion, Gray/New Gloucester of Maine.
Now a year later, Bristol will once again have a Salem team among the four teams in the double elimination tournament, which will also include the state champions from Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts. But this time it’s an entire new team with 12 new players and an entire new coaching staff, except one holdover assistant.
Two years, two different teams and two trips to Bristol, Connecticut?
That’s absolutely unheard of.
“It’s extremely hard (to do this two years in a row),” said Salem Youth Baseball President Matt Griffin, whose son Owen is a member of the 12-year-old team and also had a son on last year’s team. “It’s a great team and we’ve had a great program over the last few years. We have other teams coming up that hopefully will keep repeating (this success). This team is built pretty well to make it pretty far this year.”
A few years ago, Salem Youth Baseball completely changed its entire program around. Now the players go nine months a year, between hitting in the cages, playing club ball and then recreational and all-stars – all while playing other sports such as basketball, hockey and football. The numbers and commitment continues to grow, now with well over 400 kids in the program.
The developing and the winning hasn’t stopped.
Dan DeFrancesco, who has now coached this group to three state titles, has been a coach in the program for ten years and hasn’t seen anything like this before.
“When these (12-year-olds) are down at the park playing in the rec league, they are like celebrities. Kids want to come to see Jacob (Guerrero-Lomba) hit home runs, or Nolan (Dupuis) hit home runs or Colton (Johnson) strike out 15 guys, so these kids are like our town celebrities,” he said. “It started a few years ago when these guys were the younger kids looking up at the kids on the team from last year and even a couple of teams before that coached by Ken Gabriel. Salem has really turned it around and it just has snowballed.
“All of the kids want to be a part of Salem Little League and we have 400 plus kids in the program. It’s an awesome situation to be in. You go down there on a Friday night, you’ll have two to four games going under the lights, you have a ton of people hanging out watching baseball and it just snowballs.”
Salem 10, North Manchester/Hooksett 0 (4 inns)
North Manchester/Hooksett 000 0 – 0 0 3
Salem 008 2 – 10 12 1
North Manchester/Hooksett: Travis 2-0-0, Barrett 2-0-0, Gonzales 1-0-0, Lapierre 1-0-0, Jordan 1-0-0, Novcas 1-0-0, Duran 1-0-0, Wayman 0-0-0, Wilhelm 0-0-0, Webster 1-0-0, Gonsalves 1-0-0, Ward 1-0-0. Totals: 12-0-0.
Salem: Jacob Guerrero-Lomba 3-2-3, Nolan Dupuis 2-0-0, Colton Johnson 2-1-1, Grayson Buckley 1-1-1, Brayden Miller 2-1-1, Jackson Lemire 2-1-1, Wes Boudrea 2-1-2, William Briggs 1-0-1, Zach Bolduc 2-0-1, Owen Griffin 1-0-0, Patrick DeFrancesco 2-1-1, Kevin McDonough 1-2-0. Totals: 21-10-12.
2B: Guerrero-Lomba 2; Buckley; WP: Briggs 4 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 2 BB, 9 K.