Nova Edges Cooper City As Rivals Reunite

Fans attending Friday night’s Cooper City-Nova game saw a flash of history, and not just with former Nova player Wayne Stofsky coaching the Cooper City team against his former coach, Pat McQuaid. It was a low-scoring, quick-moving and good display of quality high school baseball like these two programs have showcased throughout their rich history. This history includes many district and playoff clashes, including a 2002 regional final in which Cooper City beat Nova to go to states for the first time.

There wasn’t a title on the line Friday night — the teams are even in different classifications this year — but the two sure played as if there was a championship at stake, as they showcased their defensive skills and did whatever they needed to keep the other guy from scoring. In the end, Nova scratched out just enough to win the game, defeating the Cowboys 1-0.

The pitchers, Luis Pugliese for Nova and Israel Cordero for Cooper City, pushed each other all night. The Titans senior, Pugliese, came through with a complete-game five-hitter. Cordero, a freshman, put on a fine pitching performance in his first varsity season, allowing just the one run in his five innings.

“My cutter was working good for me, and my fastball and my two-seam,” Pugliese said. “I just want to do my best, go undefeated if I can and throw as many innings as I can and just be the best I can on the mound for our team and hopefully get the win.”

McQuaid expressed confidence in Pugliese.

“He’s a bulldog. He wants the ball, and he’s going to throw strikes,” McQuaid said. “He’s a pitcher who’s going to move the ball around, not going to get many strikeouts, so we have to play defense for him. But he showed a lot of character tonight and did a good job.”

Nova came out swinging with a pair of first-inning hits, but base-running mistakes hurt the Titans’ scoring chances throughout the game. One such miscue was a player getting caught in a pick-off at third base. Another involved a dropped third strike that led to a double play, and one other happened when a player tried to get to third.

“You put pickoff plays on for a reason,” Stofsky said. “Actually, there’s three reasons you put a pick-off play on. Number one, you put a pick-off play on because you got ’em. Number two, you put a pick-off play on because you need ’em. And number three, it’s just to show ’em, and that situation with a runner on third and no score early in the game, we needed that out. We see the kid take a walking lead, we put a pick-off play on and those guys executed.”

Nova’s Cole Habig said base-running is something the team is trying to get better at as it also learns to control its emotions.

“It’s not that we can’t do it, it’s just sometimes it’s mental,” Habig said. “We get too pumped up. We get real excited for our games. Sometimes we’re in over our heads when we get on the bases. We just have to calm down, play hard and do what we can do instead of going too crazy.”

Nova came up with a run in the fifth after Pugliese singled to start the inning. His courtesy runner, Nicholas Chin, came home after being moved to third on a passed ball and coming in on a fielder’s choice.

Nova (4-0) entered the game with a bit of revenge on its mind. The Cowboys got the best of them in the fall, and the Titans were not going to let it happen again when it counts.

“We wanted to come out with our undefeated record and do as good as we could against them,” Pugliese said.

Habig, who had two hits for Nova, said the Titans wanted to showcase their lineup.

“They’re a good team. They beat us twice in the fall,” said Habig. “We wanted to come out and show what our front nine men can do. Usually in the fall we bat every kid, 22 kids. We wanted to come out and prove when we have our best kids out there, we can beat anybody.”

Habig dropped a bunt down the first-base line in the fourth. He later came up with a single.

“I’ve been working on bunting with Coach because I run a little bit, but work on the right side, just try to get a base hit in those situations, not only to move the runner, but also to put the bunt down and try to beat it out,” Habig said. “My second at-bat, I tried to fight. I’ve been getting a lot of curveballs lately in our past three games, so once I got a couple of fastballs, I wanted to try to let one get a little bit lower not swing over my head, but I just tried to fight and stay in it and go right side.”

Stofsky focused on the positive performance his pitchers gave against the veteran Nova team.

“Our pitchers threw a great game. Israel Cordero threw five innings. He’s a 14-year-old freshman playing against the two-time state champ Nova Titans. He throws four and two-thirds shutout innings and gives up one run, so I think it’s quite a coming out party for him.”

Cooper City’s strong effort went beyond the mound as the Cowboys (3-2) showed they can play some pretty good defense.

“We’re coming together as team,” Stofsky said. “This team is starting to get what I call ‘it.’ We’re learning how to play baseball. This is my second season, so they’re starting to understand the system, what we’re trying to do, how we’re trying to put pressure on the other team. For us, this was a great nondistrict game because now my kids know what it feels like to be in a tight, one-run baseball game against a good baseball team. It’s only going to help us.”

Stofsky, who played at Nova from 1983 to ’85 and was two-time county batting champ in addition to Player of the Year, needs to only look to his former coach to get support. Stofsky said the their relationship actually goes back to 1976 when Stofsky was a camper in one of the many camps McQuaid ran throughout the years.

“Wayne’s doing a good job. He’s going to have a good program there,” McQuaid said. “The kids are better than they were last year. He’s got some young kids. They played good defense tonight. It was just a good high school baseball game that you want to play early in the season. You want to see how your kids react to a playoff-type atmosphere. Cooper City, along with St. Thomas, has always been our biggest rivalry. And of course, Wayne played here, so a little more importance playing the game. Both pitchers did a good job. Both teams played good defense. We had to field 19 balls tonight, and usually a high school team can’t do that without making three or four errors, so that’s positive.”

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