Division Avenue High School alumni P.J. Antoniato recently signed his national letter of intent to go to St. John's University on a full baseball scholarship.

As a high school player at Division, Antoniato was a two-time All County baseball player as well as a two-time All State player. He earned these merits off his stellar pitching and outstanding defensive play as a shortstop. Antoniato was no lightweight as a batter either. During his four-year varsity baseball career at Division, he accumulated a career batting average of .370.

After high school, Antoniato accepted a full tuition scholarship to Briarcliffe Jr. College. While there, he continued his outstanding defense and continued to be an offensive force at the plate. As a freshman, Antoniato broke the school's single season hit record while hitting seven homers.

This past summer, Antoniato played for the Brooklyn Clippers and to "ACBL" where he continued to excel. He was in the league leaders in almost every category of offensive statistics, while making the league's All Star team. Antoniato was also selected as the winner of the league's Sportsmanship Award.

Antoniato went through a hard decision in narrowing St. John's down to his final choice. He was barraged by Division One schools throughout the country, including Lamar of Beaumont, taxes, Auburn University, Georgia University, as well as the local schools of Stonybrook and Hofstra, just to name a few.

His former coaches, teachers and peers as Division are very proud of Antoniato's accomplishments in college and wish him continued success as he continues his college career at St. John's. Antoniato will be playing in the very prestigious "Big East" Conference. He follows in the footsteps of other Levittown Division players, including Dan Cronin and president JV Baseball Coach Tom Tuttle, who led St. John's in hitting during the 1995 season. Other Levittown players who excelled at St. John's were Richie Schwartz (Cleveland Indians) and Nick Cosmo, both from MacArthur. Former Island Trees grads Steve Lizak (Kansas City Royals), Don Lizak (presently A.D. at St. Joseph's College), Charlie Herrera and Chris Rich, also played at St. John's.

Antoniato will become teammates next fall with another Island Trees player, Greg Thompson, who just won the Diamond Award in 2002. This award is given to the player who is best in Nassau County for that baseball season. Congratulations to Antoniato for his outstanding accomplishments.