York's Castello no-hits Waubonsie Valley

It wasn't exactly the way the Waubonsie Valley baseball team wanted to open the 2012 season.

Saturday morning the Warriors went up against visiting York and senior starting pitcher Greg Castello. He threw just 69 pitches en route to a no-hitter and a 4-0 victory.

If Waubonsie's Mitch Stefani doesn't reach base on a fielding error in the first, Castello has a perfect game.“That's all you can do (is learn from it and move on),” said Warriors coach Dan Fezzuoglio. “Our strength going into the season is pitching and defense. And Mitch (Stefani, starting pitcher) just had that one bad inning. We know we have to work to get better offensively.”

Waubonsie hit only two balls to the outfield during the game and Castello struck out three for his first no-hitter at any level.

“I wasn't feeling a no-hitter (going into the game), but this is the best I've felt all season,” he said. “I was pretty confident going into the seventh. If it had been a perfect game, I probably would have felt different. Here, all I had to concentrate on is not giving up a hit.”

York (3-0) got its offense in the third. A 2-run double by Jake Rzeszutko, an RBI single by Anthony Santos and RBI groundout by Pete Doughty brought home all 4 runs. Stefani allowed just two hits after that, and Troy Fumagalli struck out two in two innings of hitless relief.

“Stefani, he'll be fine. Troy had two good innnings. We're expecting big things from both of them,” Fezzuoglio said.

Waubonsie is coming off a season where it started slow and finished fast. The team dropped its first six games of 2011 but finished 20-13 with a league title.

“I'm glad we're facing Waubonsie early in the season. Dan does a great job with them, and they get tougher as the season goes on. I would not want to face them in the playoffs,” said York coach Dave Kalal.

Waubonsie returns to action Monday morning with an 11 a.m. home game against West Aurora.