With the end of the summer upon them, high schools will start up again as September enters. Not only do the high schools open, but the colleges open their doors as well. With the start of the fall college semester, many of Levittown's grads will try to play collegiate baseball as they further their academic pursuits. The baseball coaching staff at Division Avenue HS is very proud to announce that the graduate baseball players at Division have received over $1 million in baseball scholarship money, going back to 1990.

Considering this, it should be understood that this is just scholarship money for baseball. This does not include financial aid, student loans or other forms of aid that college coaches use to package players up.

This year, the Dragons have a number of scholarship players playing in college on baseball scholarship money. They include Eric Fierro, who is going into his junior year as a two-year starting catcher; shortstop PJ Antoniato, who will attend St. John's University after completing two years as a shortstop at Briarcliffe Jr. College; Dan Weingart, who will be a sophomore pitcher at Sienna; Scott Porter, who will be a freshman pitcher at Molloy College where he is not only receiving baseball scholarship money but also academic scholarship money. Last year's Nassau Diamond Award winner Jesse Darcy will attend Manhattan College as a freshman and he, like Scott Porter, will also receive academic scholarship money to go along with his baseball scholarship money. This group of Division grads will earn $95,100 in baseball scholarship money for this school year alone.

It is a tremendous amount of scholarship money for one school to accomplish for one sport in such a short period of time. The Division coaches want to wish their graduate players great success in the classroom as well as on the ballfield. Coach Robins expressed regrets that he never kept track of the total scholarship money his players have earned and accrued since he started coaching in 1974.

Other Division grads playing college baseball include Josh Flinn, a sophomore at Columbia; Ray Montoro and Rob Juliano, who will both be freshmen at SUNY Old Westbury; and Jeff Tamarez, who will make a bid to make the baseball team at Nassau Community College.

The Division Baseball staff is very proud of all of its alumni who have continued their playing careers at the collegiate level. Besides these tremendous college players, the Dragons presently have three players playing professional baseball, on which a follow-up article will be printed in the future.