Friday Sports: Watertown Rapids players look to overcome early season adversity

WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – It’s been an up and down 3 weeks to the start of the 2022 PGCBL season for the Watertown Rapids.

The team got off to a 2-1 start, but then dropped 13 straight games before defeating Batavia 3-2 in game 2 of a doubleheader on the road Wednesday night.

Watertown entered Friday’s road contest with the Boonville Baseball Club with a 3-15 record, currently in last place in the PGCBL East Division.

It’s been a season of highs and lows so far and the players say dealing with adversity is just a part of the game.

“I mean, baseball, it’s a crazy game. It doesn’t matter if you have the best team or the worst team, you’re gonna go through a lot of stages of success and failure. Coach Kogut is big and so are we on every game is different. We’re gonna have some really awesome success like against the Diamond Dawgs we had I think 17 hits as a team, and then we’ll have days where we don’t hit at all. So, you know it’s a 50 game season, it’s really long, so we just gotta brush off every loss and flush it like it doesn’t matter,” said Catcher Elvis Lopez.

”We just come back after every loss that we have and just brush it off, forget about it because we can’t dwell on the past, and just focus on the future. That’s really it,” said Tyree Bradley.

In Canton, Ohio, two former Watertown Red and Black football players were inducted into the AFA Hall of Fame.

Patrick Britton and Mark Loftus joined elite company with their inductions Friday evening.

Loftus was a member of the 1980 Red and Black EFL championship team and had a tryout with the New England Patriots.

Britton was the epitome of Red and Black football and had his career cut short by injury.

Both players honored to be inducted into the AFA Hall.

”My first reaction was overwhelming humility. I thought ‘Why me?’ when there’s so many deserving individuals. I was happy. I kept returning to people I thought were much more deserving,” said Britton.

“That’s why I regretted that I couldn’t play just one more time. Smell that grass, Friday night lights, and just have that feeling one more time. But I don’t know if I did, that it would be the same anyway because my team was a special season. And I didn’t know that the memories of playing in Watertown Red and Black will stay with me forever,” said Loftus.

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