It’s no secret that players from New England schools are the favorites in the Cape Cod Baseball League. When names are paired with colleges like BC, UConn or Northeastern during introductions, the crowd always cheers a little louder.
The Hyannis Harbor Hawks are home to a few ballplayers from local schools like Jackson Emus (Princeton) and Jay Driver (Harvard), but two Northeastern Huskies currently stand out among the rest. Mike Sirota and Jordy Allard may be traveling differing career paths, but both play for Northeastern, and both are tearing up the Cape Cod League.
Allard hails from Woodstock, Vt., a small town in the Green Mountain State with less than 3,000 residents, while Sirota's hometown is Broad Channel, N.Y., an urban neighborhood in Queens.
“My whole baseball journey has shaped me into the player I am today," said Allard. “Being from Vermont, it’s always been a struggle for baseball players to be seen and to play at the same level as other states. I would run hills on the family horse farm and throw buckets of balls into a tarp in the horse arena because I don’t have a catch partner when I go home. I would go shovel snow off the closest mound 35 minutes from me and throw bullpens to get ready for the season."