Jason Lucarelli didn’t expect to miss playing sports so much.
He treasured every moment of playing sports in high school, from football to hockey to baseball, but once he graduated from Hamburg High School in 2016, life got busier. He began working 30 hours a week at Wegmans and when fall came, Lucarelli continued his education at the University at Buffalo.
UB has two club hockey teams, but commuting from Hamburg to Amherst for early morning practices, in addition to work and school, was just too much. And while playing adult league hockey with older brothers Marc and Justin helped to feed his competitive spirit and was enjoyable — “I never got to play with them before, besides on our pond in the backyard, so it’s been fun” — it wasn’t enough.
“I was gonna play hockey at UB, and then I started working at Wegmans, and then I realized how much work school is,” Lucarelli explained. “I was doing around 30 hours a week at Wegmans and then full-time at school, and I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ especially commuting every day. But after a full year of not doing any sports besides [men’s league hockey], I realized I did miss it.”
So it’s to baseball that Lucarelli has decided to make his return. He played varsity baseball for three years at Hamburg and was a leader on his team as an outfielder, pitcher, hitter, and baserunner.
His cousin, Robert Sawicki, plays for the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, and after sending coach Zach Foster his high school statistics and some film, Lucarelli has committed to join the team next year.
“I was always just about as good as my cousin, so I thought, why not?” said Lucarelli. “One day, I just told him, ‘Why don’t you tell your coach that I’m interested in playing next year?’ So that day, he did, and he gave me his email, so I started emailing him. I sent him my stats from last year, and then I went down in March, and I visited and talked to him.”
Lucarelli knows he’ll have to prove himself to his new coach with the limited knowledge the coach currently has of him, but he’s looking forward to his opportunities at Pitt-Bradford.
“I don’t know how much playing time I’ll get until he can actually see me play,” Lucarelli said. “I sent him a little bit of film of my workouts over the summer, of just like hitting in the cage and doing some fielding work, but other than that and my stats, he really has no idea what kind of player I am.”
Lucarelli plans to work hard over the summer to prepare himself, from some legion baseball for the Allegany Legion team to just getting to the diamond every chance he gets. Pitt-Bradford’s fall ball program will not only prepare him further, but it will also give his new coaches an idea of what kind of player they’re getting.
“I’m hoping to get a couple of games in this summer with my cousin’s legion team,” Lucarelli said. “I’ve been going to the cages a lot this summer and trying to get fielding work whenever I can get someone to come with me and hit some balls. And then I got all fall. They do a fall program where you play just a couple games, so right now I’m just looking to get back into it before I start thinking too much about playing time. But hopefully I’ll be getting a significant amount of playing time by junior, senior year.”
Pitt-Bradford finished the 2017 season 16-25 overall and 8-8 in the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference, in what was expected to be a rebuilding year, according to Lucarelli. The No. 5 seed Panthers lost to the No. 1 seed La Roche College in the championship round of the AMCC tournament. They’ve lost a few outfielders, so Lucarelli, who plans to play outfield there, knows he’ll have some good opportunities in the future.
Lucarelli won’t soon forget his time playing high school sports as he moves to the next level, and he knows he has Hamburg baseball coaches Steve Chaffee and Derek Hill to thank for the player he is today.
“They were incredible coaches,” Lucarelli said. “They play off of each other so well. Hill is the intense baseball technique, baseball-oriented coach, and Chaffee’s more of the player’s coach. They made me into a better baseball player and taught me more about the sport than I ever thought I would know. Coming from sophomore year, how much I feel like I improved because of them is insane, and how much I feel like I know about playing positions now and what everybody needs to do in certain situations, it’s drastic. They were incredible.”
Lucarelli is excited to be part of a team again; the bonds formed with teammates and the fun of playing a sport are what he missed most.
“At UB, I got to know a couple people, and I hung out with these guys and a couple people from high school,” Lucarelli explained. “But I miss the team aspect of it, getting to know a ton of guys I didn’t know before. And just playing a sport. I go to the gym and stuff, but playing a sport is just way more fun for exercise.”
After he finishes out the summer playing hockey with his brothers for the Transitowne Goatsharks, Lucarelli has more of that team aspect and hopefully some baseball success to look forward to at Pitt-Bradford.