Coach Aram Manoukian has been devotedly coaching baseball in Watertown for a very long time. He played the game, he knows the game, he loves to teach the game. The 2026 season has been all about teaching, with a roster that includes five freshman and 11 sophomores. He knew from the start of pre-season that there would be bumps along the way. He knew the Middlesex League was loaded with good baseball teams. What he didn’t necessarily know was how big the bumps would be, and as it turns out, they were huge. The final home game of 2026 was yet another bump, as the Raiders lost to Melrose 11-2 on Senior Night. The only two Seniors on the Raisers roster are Kingston Omolade and Aidan Kanode. They were recognized in pre-game festivities. Kingston was the second baseman in Coach Manoukian’s starting lineup, and Aidan was the DH. Congratulations to both for their efforts on behalf of Raiders Baseball and Watertown Athletics! Tuesday’s game was delayed by weather, as in summer-like rain and wind and thunder and lighting — at the end of a summer-like day which in realty is still spring.
Watertown Baseball moved to 1-5 in league play with an 8-2 loss to Stoneham at Victory Field on the afternoon of May 1. In six league games to date, Watertown has scored 0, 1, 1, 4, 1 and 2 runs. It’s not a recipe for winning baseball, whether you are the run-prevention Red Sox or the Watertown Raiders Varsity Baseball. The Raiders have some good, young talent and they are only going to get better, but putting together hits and scoring runs continues to be a challenge in a very stingy Middlesex League. The Raiders sent Julian Boas, their sophomore right hander, to the mound, and early on he was in command. So was Stoneham’s tall right hander, along with his decent fastball and curve. After two innings on a beautiful Spring day, and at the end of a cool and rainy week, the game was scoreless and visions of a pitcher’s duel seemed real. But the Raiders came unglued in the third, letting their starter down with poor defense and flat play. Boas started the third with a ground out to first. It looked like he had the second out when a wicked breaking ball got Stoneham’s leadoff hitter to chase for strike three — but, the ball bounced in front of Raiders catcher Andrew Reilly and by the time Reilly retrieved the ball in fair play, the Stoneham runner was three-quarters of the way down the first base line. Reilly didn’t have a chance to throw him out by this point, but he tried and best intentions went awry, as the ball went to the right of first baseman Peter Pavlidis and towards the chain-link fence behind first base. The runner had struck out, but got the bag at first and took second on the throwing error. Instead of two outs and no one on, it was runner on second with one out. Demoralizing if you are a pitcher!
Spring baseball turned into summer baseball Tuesday night at Victory Field. Temperatures were in the 80’s most of the day and still in the low 70’s at game time. Ah yes, game time. This is an important piece of Tuesday’s story. Start time was slated for 7 p.m. At 6:50 P.M., under mostly clear skies both teams had completed their warm-ups, and both starting pitchers were deep into preparation in their respective bullpens. Seven P.M. passed – no umps. By 7:15 P.M., Wilmington was throwing a football around. Finally at 7:20 the umps strolled in thru the DPW gate and across the football field. By 7:30 P.M. we had first pitch. Not a big deal on a beautiful summer-like night, right? Wrong, but first the skinny on a 4-0 Watertown win. Sophomore Righthander Julian Boas got the start Tuesday night against Wilmington, who came into the game 0-3 in league play, losing three times last week, their first week of the season. Watertown was also 0-3 in league play, and like Wilmington, lost all three league games played last week. Boas got experience on the hill last season as a Freshman, and takes a regular turn in the rotation this year.
He has good velocity on his fastball, throws an affective breaking ball and mixes in a few change ups. What Boas has in spades is command and control. He can paint the outside corner with all his pitches, he knows when to mix in the fastball out of the strike zone, and best of all, he is not afraid to pitch inside and he does it with command. He sawed off many a batters Tuesday night with inside fastballs and his breaking ball. Rare to find someone so young so in control of location with his pitches, but Boas is, and it was on display Tuesday night. Boas retired the side in order in the first, third and fourth innings. Of the 22 batters he faced on the night, he got nine outs via the groundball and he struck out five.
The Boston Gold Kings(BGK) entered their final game of the season feeling pretty good about themselves, entering the contest with second place locked up and having beaten first-place Hudson 6-3 just days earlier.
While Saturday night’s game versus Salem wouldn’t change the Gold Kings fate come the post-season, it was important to Salem. A win, and a loss by Holyoke versus Norfolk would assure Salem of third place and a match-up with the Gold Kings for a chance to make the Finals. A loss, and Salem would be relegated to the play-in game versus last-place Norfolk and a potential date with Hudson, who finished the season 14-2. Following along? Well, this tale has two parts — part one is a flat game by the Gold Kings that resulted in a 3-2 Salem win.
Watertown/Wayland Hockey deserves so much credit, in my opinion. From the coaching staff on down to the last player on the roster, there has been little to no quit despite winning very infrequently. They play in a very competitive and physical league with a young and undersized roster, yet they always hang tough, even when the score might indicate otherwise. With the regular season winding down and still no league wins next to their name, Watertown/Wayland found the secret sauce against a Wakefield squad, who in addition to clearly getting out-played, left their A-game, let alone their C-game back in Wakefield. Final score, which is music to the ears of EVERYONE associated with Watertown/Wayland, Watertown/Wayland 7 Wakefield 2. It started very rocky for the Raiders. SIX seconds in captain Luke Egan was sent to the penalty box for hooking. But the Raiders executed a good kill, and junior Goalie Finnley MacDonald, called upon all season long to make quality and quantity saves, faced two good scoring chances and steered them aside. But a funny thing happened on the way to getting back to full strength —the Raiders failed to execute the transition from Egan leaving the box to a line shift, and were immediately back on the penalty kill, guilty of a bench minor for too many men on the ice.
Now, if you believe in fate, I’d recommend the story of the rest of the period as proof that it exists. The Raiders not only killed the second penalty, but settled down, played solid hockey, and at 11:14 went on the power play thanks to — yup, a Wakefield penalty for too many men on the ice. And 28 seconds later they were whistled for a tripping, giving Watertown/Wayland a two-man advantage. And what did the Raiders do better than Wakefield with their power play opportunities? That’s right hockey fans, they scored, first a 5-on-3 power play goal courtesy of a Griffin Wood wrister, and then they pulled off the daily double as Michael Philbin scored a 5-on-4 power play goal to make it 2-0. Now, to be clear, I’m neither making light or making fun of what I’m about to say, but there have been very few opportunities to say “Raiders are up 2-0 with two minutes left in the period.” It sounds good, right?
Up first, the Boys… Senior night honored three young men who have devoted their time and effort to Watertown Basketball — Higor Camara, Andrew Malovanyi and Benjamin Teixeira. Congratulations to all three of them and a tip of the hat for their contribution to Watertown Athletics and Raiders Basketball! A season that has seen mostly struggles has been better of late, with the Raiders winners of four of their last five. Two were non-league blowouts against an inferior opponent (a home-and-home), but two were league wins, and one on the road. Every team wants to win Senior Night, and tonight was no different. For most of the contest it seemed as though Watertown would do just that — win — but, they went cold and flat in the fourth while Melrose, fighting to stay in contention for a D2 Tournament berth, found their way just in time to bring about overtime. And in overtime it was ALL Melrose as the Red Hawks outscored the Raiders 14-2 to defeat Watertown, 59-47. The first quarter was a bit of a slog, as both teams struggled offensively. The only offense for the Raiders came courtesy of junior Michael Nshanian, who scored 8, four of four from the line. Both teams lit it up, relatively speaking, in the second. While Melrose featured a balanced output, Nshanian added 9 more on the way to 36 on the night. But, despite that impressive number, it was a harbinger of sorts for how the night would turn out. As Nshanian continued to score, the rest of the team stood around and increasingly their half-court offense became downright stagnant.
An excellent hockey game was played at the JAR on Wednesday, with both teams deserving of a “W,” but it was Wilmington’s stud center, senior Isaac Tavares, who ultimately carried them to an overtime 4-3 win with his game-winning goal in overtime number one with teams playing four aside
The Raiders welcomed back junior Luke Egan to the lineup after a one-game absence, and he played a huge role, and almost carried the Raiders to victory much the same way Tavares did for Wilmington. But first, Watertown/Wayland had to withstand a barrage of early hits from a physical Wilmington team. While mostly clean, the hits were surely meant to intimidate the Raiders — and they didn’t. And in a matter of minutes in the first period, Wilmington’s penalty box turned into Wilmington’s alternate bench, as three players were whistled for penalties in a three and half minute span. Unfortunately, the Raiders couldn’t capitalize. And when teams were finally both at even strength, Emrich O’Brien made some individual magic stickhandling through two Raiders players on the way to scoring thanks to a top-shelf wrister that Raider goalie Finnley MacDonald had no chance of stopping. Twenty-two seconds before the end of the period Tavares scored his first of the game with a wicked wrister of his own, flying down the left wing and potting one to MacDonald’s glove side just inside the top corner of the goal posts to make it 2-0. As always, though, Watertown/Wayland didn’t allow the deficit to stop them from competing. The second line of Jake Fijux, Ryder Barenholtz and Logan Desrosiers was really good on this night, and they got the Raiders on the scoreboard just 2:58 into the period with some nifty passing off of some effective forechecking. Once in the Wilmington zone Fijux hit Derosiers alone in the slot, and Derosiers wristed it low glove-side to beat Wilmington goalie Cam Thompson to cut the lead to one. The Raiders continued to press, and were the better team through much of the first 10 minutes of the second period. But one little let down, which has plagued Watertown/Wayland all season, and the inability to clear a rebound allowed Wilmington’s Gray to make it 3-1 after two periods. It took all of 43 seconds of the third period for the Raiders to make a statement — we are still in this game. Isaac Maillis did some effective dirty work in the corner, and Luke Egan made sure his effort was not for naught, picking up the puck and feeding Lukas Wynn in the slot who scored to make it 3-2. The next nine minutes and change found both teams skating up and down the ice, competing and hitting and looking to score the next goal. Another by Wilmington would most likely ice a win. The Raiders were looking for the equalizer, which is what they got when the tandem of Wynn and Egan struck again, thanks to Egan’s skating and stickhandling, which led to Wynn scoring the tying goal with just under 5 minutes left in regulation.
Not 30 seconds later, Watertown/Wayland’s Adam Capello was called for tripping, but the Raiders showed no signs of panic and killed the penalty, and sent the game to overtime tied at 3. In overtime, Watertown/Wayland was not able to control the puck for long, and found themselves on their heels a bit in the 4-on-4, five minute format. The main reason?
The other day I mentioned the many cliches that sports forces us to say or hear and conjure up in describing the action or analyzing the game. Here’s another — “on paper” — as in, on paper these two teams seem pretty evenly matched. Paper has a way of deceiving at times, so one should never rely on paper to determine the outcome of a game. What we did know entering yesterday’s game was that on paper Watertown/Wayland and Lexington were both in need of a win. Watertown/Wayland was 1-12 and Lexington 3-11.
The Raiders are a young team playing in a difficult league. Lexington, on the other hand, opted out of the Middlesex League for hockey and are playing as an independent. All that said, both teams needed to look past each-other’s record and bring their best game to the ice on a Wednesday afternoon in pursuit of a win. And, luckily for those who watched, both teams took nothing for granted, and indeed played hard. It was an entertaining high school hockey game in which Watertown/Wayland prevailed by the slightest of margins, pulling out a 2-1 win. The first period was a pretty clean one played at a steady pace with few whistles. Each team was penalized once, but neither power play unit could muster much.
