Sacred Heart Prep Gators

Coach: Sean McMillan

2024 Record: 7-20

Sacred Heart suffered through a seven-win 2024 season, but figures to be better this year with nine returning starters and the return of Devin Saltzgaber, who was the CCS Pitcher of the Year in 2023 – he won 12 games and had an earned-run average of 1.12 -- who sustained a shoulder injury at a January tournament and wasn’t available to the Gators until April.

“His first start was in a league game, said coach Sean McMillan. “We weren’t able to ease him in. We were asking a lot of him.”

Saltzgaber, a Pamona-Pitzer signee, is healthy this spring and big things are expected. He will join forces with junior Rallin Covey, a USC commit who posted a 1.87 ERA with 68 strikeouts in 71 innings, to give the Gators the Bay Division’s best one-two punch in pitching.

“We have two premiere starters,” coach Sean McMillan said. “That should help us in the league.”

Sacred Heart Prep lost eight one-run games last year. With a year of experience, McMillan expects his team to be better in those tight games.

“We found ourselves on the wrong side of a lot of one- and two-run games last year,” Covey said. “I think that experience was really good for us. It will give us extra drive to win those close games and the experience of playing games like that should also serve us well.”

It provides another layer of optimism for a team already feeling the confidence of two aces in its rotation.

“I expect this team to compete for a championship and make a run into (the) CCS,” McMillan said.

Offensively, McMillan expects big things from outfielder Daniel Gee, while junior catcher Nico Pollioni, also the Gators closer, threw out 19 would-be base stealers last season.