Tuckahoe may have been the prohibitive favorite to hoist the Section I trophy coming into the double-elimination Class C tournament, but the No.1 seed certainly knew how to dial up the drama. On May 24, the Tigers punctuated their perfect—and comeback filled – run through the postseason with their most dramatic achievement yet, erasing a five-run deficit against Pawling to win the Section I title.

Tuckahoe coach Jerry DeFabbia, whose team previously overcame early leads against both Pawling and Haldane in the postseason, said that his guys’ ability to come through in big situations has been apparent all season. And that wasn’t any more evident than in the team’s 9-5 win over Pawling at Pace University.

“If you look at the last three games we did play, we didn’t come out hot and we fell behind,” DeFabbia said. “But we were able to stick to our gameplan because nobody on this team is trying to be the hero, to do it all by himself.”

Pawling tallied five runs off Tuckahoe starter Matt Mondrone in the top of the fourth inning, after a defensive miscue with two outs. In the bottom half, Tuckahoe responded with two runs of its own, but it was in the fifth inning the top seed finally began to find its rhythm at the plate.

With two runners on and nobody out, Pawling lifted starter Javier Santiago in favor of Tyler Schilb, who pitched against the Tigers in the first round just one week ago. Tuckahoe shortstop Lino Poli promptly greeted Schilb with a two-run single up the middle to make it a 5-4 ballgame.

“I just went up there with a good approach which was to see the pitch and hit it back up the middle,” Poli said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

The Tigers would tie the game on a bases-loaded wild pitch, and Michael Morgan gave them their first lead when he singled in a run to make it 6-5. Two more bases loaded walks and another wild pitch sent Tuckahoe into the sixth inning with a 7-5 lead they would not relinquish.

Owen Moran, who came on for Mondrone with one out in the fifth inning, fired a scoreless 2.2 innings in relief to shut the door and send Tuckahoe fans home happy.

“Pawling coach Bobby Rodriguez really does a great job with his team, and they really came out swinging today,” DeFabbia said. “But if you look at each team, it was one small mistake that happened, ours was in the fourth, theirs was in the bottom of the fifth; that made a big difference today.”

Tuckahoe, which was topped in the Class C finals in each of the last two years by North Salem, came into the 2018 season with designs on the title, something not lost on the Tiger players as they celebrated Thursday’s win.

“We’re feeling great, we’re happy, and since the beginning of the season… we felt we belonged here,” Poli said. “Our goal was to get a little farther than we did before.”

The Tigers will be back in action on Thursday, May 31, after press time, when they play the Section IX champion at Pace University.