PB’s Alex Bucolo to play Division 2 baseball at Mansfield

By Mike Zummo
Posted 8/24/22

Pine Bush varsity baseball coach Matt Boffalo has coached Alex Bucolo since he was 8 years old.

Actually, he’s known most of the Bushmen that long, as Bucolo is a year older than his son, …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

PB’s Alex Bucolo to play Division 2 baseball at Mansfield

Posted

Pine Bush varsity baseball coach Matt Boffalo has coached Alex Bucolo since he was 8 years old.

Actually, he’s known most of the Bushmen that long, as Bucolo is a year older than his son, Matt, also a member of the team.

He will see Bucolo’s senior class off this year; and as the summer winds down and senior year is about to begin, Bucolo announced his commitment to play Division 2 baseball at Mansfield University, starting in the spring 2024 season.
Mansfield coaches saw him for the first time in July, and he had had already been mulling several offers, including one from Division II St. Rose, but then he took a visit to Mansfield.

“I hadn’t made up my mind yet about what school I was going to, and I visited Mansfield and I just loved everything about it,” Bucolo said. “Coach (Andrew) Chalot and Coach (Evan) McAndrew were great. I feel they’re going to help me develop a lot, and right when I stepped on campus, I knew that was the right school for me.”

He’ll join a team that had an 11-13 record in 2022 in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference.

“They’ve been playing good, even in one of the best Division 2 conferences,” Bucolo said. “They’ve been progressing every year, and they’re looking to progress even more throughout the years coming.”

When he arrives on campus for his freshman year, he won’t be alone as his former Bushmen teammate, Joe Gleason, who graduated in June, will be heading into his second season at Mansfield.

One of the main allures for Bucolo was Mansfield coaches told him he would get an opportunity to pitch right away.

“They said the same thing about Gleason,” Boffalo said. “It might be tough in the beginning at that level, but I think they’ll be successful.”

Bucolo has already shown he can pitch in big spots as he threw two key games in the New York State Class AA tournament on the Bushmen’s way to a semifinal appearance.

He pitched the final two innings in relief of Gleason in the Bushmen’s 6-4 Section 9 Class AA championship win over the Kingston Tigers. He came in relief again a week later in the NYSPHSAA regional championship game against Roy C. Ketcham.

Even after he gave up four runs in the sixth, he came back out in the seventh and blew the Indians away to send the Bushmen to the Final Four.

“It would be easy for a player in a big high-pressure situation like that to fold, especially when they came out and scored a couple of runs on him,” Boffalo said. “I had various people in the pen ready to go, and he rose to that occasion, like I expected him to. That’s why I left him in there.”

He had an even better game a week later in the state semifinals when he held the Fayetteville-Manlius Hornets to two runs in 6+ innings in a game the Bushmen eventually lost, 2-1.

“Pitching in those big games is nerve-wracking definitely,” Bucolo said. “But you’ve just got to pitch, and you can’t think too much. You can’t let the crowd get too involved and just focus. But I feel pitching those big games will definitely help me when I’m at the college level, to get used to being in tough situations, and with the noises with the crowed and getting used to that environment.”