Great South League

Athens Pirates Players return "Home" in Siena versus Georgia Baseball Weekend

This weekend's 3 game baseball series between the Siena Saints from Loudenville NY and the University of Georgia Bulldogs will not be your typical match-up of D I schools playing out-of-conference foes. It won't be your average North comes South or blue-gray, Yankee-rebel rivalry.

In fact, it's unlike any other college baseball series on the DI level this season. This series will feature 15 players on the team's rosters that have been teammates or about to be teammates of the well known College Summer Baseball Club, the Athens Pirates. . It is, in effect, a "homecoming" to Athens for 12 players on the Siena roster: 8 former players and 4 new players for the 2010 College Summer Baseball Season.

Even Siena Assistant Baseball Coach, Jimmy Jackson, is a Pirates veteran, having played on the 2002 Pirates team. On the Georgia side, pitchers Justin Earls and John Herman played on the 2009 Athens Pirates and were teammates with 4 Siena players: Danny Paolini, Ryan Poplawski, Andrew Sawyer, and Nikko Stento. Sawyer is a local product of McEachern High School and is from Powder Springs GA.

Tony Rossi, the 41 year veteran head coach of Siena started sending some of his best players to Athens in 2004. That year the Saints sent John Lannan, LHP, currently the #1 pitcher in the Washington Nationals rotation and Scott King to play for the Pirates and the tradition continues to today. Georgia's Director of Baseball Operations, Kris Edge, a long-time "friend" of the Pirates even sent his brother, Kevin, to play with the Pirates in 2004: a teammate of Lannan and King. Lannan spend the summer with the Joe & Vikki Sykora family while King was a guest of Stan Stanchek, long-time Pirates friend who passed away a couple of years ago.

The Pirates are now in their 19^th season and members of the Great South League (www.greatsouthleague.com ). The Great South League is the nations largest College Summer Baseball League consisting of 24 teams in 6 states ranging from Virginia to Florida.

The 3 game series begins Friday, March 12th at 6:30 PM at Foley Field in Athens GA where the expected starter for Siena is Pirates' signee, Robert Tedesco. Saturday's game is scheduled for a 3PM start. The final game of the series is Sunday, March 14^th at 1PM.