BY MICHAEL KELLY
Gazette Reporter
CLIFTON PARK — For most travel baseball squads, tournaments come in nearby towns and counties. Once or twice, the best teams might get to travel a far distance from home.
The Clifton Park Knights? Well, let’s let a couple team members describe their summer.
“We’ve been a lot of places this summer,” said Nik Malachowski, a shortstop and pitcher. “It’s been an adventure.”
“We have guys on this team that love the game,” said Ben Anderson, a catcher and pitcher. “So, we’d play anywhere.”
And, the Knights — a 16U baseball squad — pretty much did. The squad, whose players are mostly about to become seniors at Shenendehowa and have years of experience with the Plainsmen’s varsity baseball team, did not play in a tournament this summer closer than Newburgh and traveled thousands of miles for its games overall.
Nik Malachowski throws a pitch during a bullpen session at the Clifton Park Knights baseball practice in Clifton Park on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015. (Michael Kelly/Gazette Reporter)
The majority of the Knights have been together since they were 8 years old. In the near-decade since the group started playing together, head coach Tom Huerter — whose son Kevin Huerter plays for the team — said the team has won every district and state tournament in which it played, and won its region three times.
With that success in mind, the decision was made last summer to skip some of the more traditional tournaments with the team as 15s and 16s.
“It was time for them to get outside of here and play some elite national teams,” Tom Huerter said.
“We wanted to go out and get some of our guys seen at some of these big tournaments,” said Anderson. “We wanted to become more of what they call a ‘showcase team.’ ”
This year, the Knights have played a collection of local exhibition games and traveled to five tournaments. Besides their first tournament in Newburgh and their season-ending tournament in New Jersey this week, the Knights competed in Georgia, Long Island, and Virginia.
Head coach Tom Huerter throws a pitch during batting practice at the Clifton Park Knights baseball practice in Clifton Park on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015. (Michael Kelly/Gazette Reporter)
“They were all high-level tournaments that are exposure events for the kids,” Huerter said. “We have several kids that have a chance to play in college, so getting the boys the opportunity to play in front of college coaches was important.”
The team’s top star is pitcher Ian Anderson, the twin brother of Ben Anderson. Committed to Vanderbilt University, Ian Anderson was recently ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the state and No. 4 in the country for his age by Prep Baseball Report.
Ian Anderson readies to step into the batter’s box at a Clifton Park Knights baseball practice in Clifton Park on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015. (Michael Kelly/Gazette Reporter)
But players such as Ben Anderson and Malachowski, just to name a couple, also are likely to get the chance to play college baseball. That skill level on the Knights showed this summer, as the team made it to the semifinal round in a national tournament in Richmond, Virginia, and also went 6-1 in another national tournament in Emerson, Ga.
“They showed they belonged,” said assistant coach Bob Anderson, who is Ben Anderson’s and Ian Anderson’s father.
The Knights’ 6-1 record in Georgia left the squad unable to advance out of pool play in a tournament featuring more than 300 teams, while the team came up just short in Virginia.
“We ran out of arms there — four games in one day,” said Bob Anderson, who coached Schalmont High School’s varsity team for 20 years and won a state championship with the Sabres.
The Knights did win their tournament in Newburgh and also made it to the semifinals in Long Island. All in all, the team’s travels and successes made for a memorable campaign of baseball for the Knights–their latest such summer season.
“It’s been fun playing against the best competition,” Malachowski said.
“These kids really get along great, so they’ve been lucky to stay together and compete at such a high level,” Huerter said.
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