Goffstown legion head coach Pete Kiro gives some words of encouragement to Ryan Allen, who drew a bases-loaded walk in the fifth inning of a 7-3 comeback win over Laconia in a non-district game on Monday, June 12, at Goffstown High School. (Goffstown News/Matt Stout)

By Matt Stout
Staff Writer

Everything about the Goffstown Legion baseball team’s inaugural 2005 season was a mystery.

The players, just three deep with varsity experience; Pete Kiro, a first-time head coach; and District B, a league far different from the one the team last played in during the late 1970s -- it all floated somewhere between the new and the unknown for Goffstown.

Black and blue, both in uniform and feeling following a 4-16 season, Goffstown lacked experience and pitching. In Kiro’s mind, the team only needed time to figure how to combine what it did well -- hitting over .300 as a team -- with what good teams do well -- winning often and with conviction.

Enter the 2006 season, one in which Kiro and his team hope will mark the real return of Goffstown legion baseball.

“This year there’s no more unknown,” said Kiro, who helped bring legion baseball back to the town last summer after roughly 27 years. “That learning curve is now gone. My coaching staff and I are going to expect a little more out of the kids, and they expect more out of themselves, too.”

They have good reason to. Though last year’s team featured mostly 16-year-olds and just three varsity high school players, Evan Turcotte, Kory Kiro and Craig McGee, Goffstown returns its entire lineup this season, one in which every player played varsity this past spring. In 2005, that group featured two players who hit over .400 in Turcotte and catcher Steve Case and two more who hit over .340 in Kory Kiro and Tom Burke.

The team’s also added a number of promising arms to bolster a pitching staff of six from last season to 10 this year.

Led by Kiro -- Pete’s son -- and McGee -- son of pitching coach Dave -- Goffstown also features Turcotte, Mike Viviers and Joe Torre in the rotation; Calvary Christian School’s Kyle Boucher, John Stark’s Eric Sappier and Harrison Schwendimann in middle relief; and as of right now, a closer-by-committee.

Pete Kiro hopes the situation will produce a standout so McGee, the team’s shortstop and designated late-innings arm, isn’t forced to switch positions late in every close game.

That, however, is a nice problem when compared to last year, when Goffstown often found itself short-handed on the mound. With a rigorous 32-game schedule played in roughly 40 days, the lack of pitching depth was the sole reason the team lost as many as eight games from the seventh inning on.

“Last year, we thought we had enough pitching,” Turcotte said. “And when you have something like six, seven games in a row, I don’t want to say it’s like playing in the pros, but you see what the pros go through every day in a week. I can’t even imagine how they do it every day for 162 games.”

Though Pete Kiro hopes to shake the mystery from this year’s squad, he’s looking to do it with a couple unknowns as well. Schwendimann, Boucher, Proctor Academy’s Nate Blouin and Sappier, a hard-throwing left-hander who took last year off from high school baseball, all have the potential to push Goffstown into the tournament, Kiro said.

If the team makes it there, it may run into Jutras Post 43 out of Manchester, the district’s perennial power and formerly the only home to Goffstown players. Though several still play there, the creation of another team has given more athletes in both areas a better chance to hone their skills.

“Goffstown being a great baseball hotbed, it’s able to handle its own team,” said the former Jutras assistant. “And being we have Goffstown (High School) to choose from, they set the table for us to be successful for many, many years.”