By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
Marc Petragnani, Cherokee High’s longtime baseball coach, readily admits there are probably less days in front of the horse than riding the back of the cart when it comes to his high school coaching career.
That’s what made the 2025 season so special — it was the kind of year that a coach might wait his entire career for.
The Chiefs went 28-3, registering the most wins in a single season in school history, and won their second state championship — and first since 1985, back when a dozen eggs cost 80 cents and you could go see a movie for less than $4. They put multiple players on the nj.com All-State lists and started the season with a 20-game winning streak.
The interesting thing about this team, though, was how it approached the season. The Chiefs had the ultimate goal of putting a state championship banner in their school’s gymnasium, and they weren’t shy when it came to talking about such aspirations. Normally, coaches and players give you the ol’, “we’re taking it one game at a time” mantra, but the Chiefs said, “nope, we want to win a state championship. And we expect to.”
It wasn’t bravado or them being bragadocious, they just had a ton of confidence that the product they could put out there on a daily basis was better than anybody else in Group 4.
“I expected us to win South Jersey and I expected us to potentially win the state title,” said Petragnani, who notched career win No. 250 when the Chiefs held on for a 5-4 win over rival Eastern Regional in the South Jersey Group 4 sectional title game. “I thought we were as good as anybody in the state. I’m not trying to be cocky, but I didn’t think anybody had the pitching depth that we had and I was hoping our offense would take a step up, and I believe they did.”
In order to win a state championship in New Jersey high school baseball, usually you need two dominant starting pitchers and one reliable reliever. Cherokee had that — and plenty more. The team was led all year by senior starters Henry Radbill, a Rutgers University recruit, and Harvard recruit Brett Gable. The Chiefs also had standout sophomore lefty Cooper Burti to close a game out whenever they needed a few big outs.
But this team used 10 pitchers this season, and guys like Josh Litsky, Parker New and Drew Dreby were instrumental in helping Cherokee earn the No. 1 seed entering the sectional playoffs. Dreby, a junior, had a 1.05 ERA in 20 innings of work, and New contributed 20 more innings with a 2.10 ERA. Litsky, a senior, had a 2.23 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 15 innings.
“We had goals mapped out and we were on a mission to accomplish those goals. We knew we had the guys on the team to do it, and we wanted to get to it,” Gable said. “With our team this year, a lot of the guys have played together since we were 7 or 8 years old, and those senior and junior classes are what really made up our team this year. We’ve really had that brotherhood and team connection from playing baseball from little kids to where we are now, getting ready to head off to college. I think that was a huge factor in our success and our ability to be confident in going out and chasing a state title.”
Gable and Radbill were both virtually unhittable all season, as Radbill posted a 0.91 ERA and 97 strikeouts in just 53 innings, while Gable had a 1.47 ERA in 57 innings, allowing just 33 hits while striking out 90. Having two lefties at the top of the rotation that each threw about 90 miles-per-hour with outstanding secondary pitches made life a whole lot easier for Petragnani. There was no mystery about who was getting the ball come playoff time.
“Two starters and a reliever gets you through the playoffs, but I think we had five starters and four relievers that we could have used to help us. But when you have Gable and Radbill available, you don’t skip their starts. They are both wonderful kids, real baseball guys through-and-through, hard working and motivated. They were always looking to improve and never settled for anything less than their best. It’s been a true joy to coach them,” Petragnani said. “If you hung around them, saw how they practiced, saw how they threw bullpens and carried themselves, that has to rub off on (younger players). That becomes the expectation. The best teams are player-led, not coach-led, and I believe those two guys led us in the direction we wanted to go and established that work ethic that is required to excel at this level.”
But as much as it seemed as though everything went right for this team, the Chiefs had a few bumps in the road. They were unceremoniously bounced from the prestigious Diamond Classic tournament in the semifinals by Haddonfield, just a few hours after one of their biggest wins in years, over top-seeded Gloucester Catholic, the No. 1 team in the state at the time. Then came a 10-inning loss against Eastern, and a humbling setback to Delran.
“The Haddonfield loss was tough to swallow, but that came on the heels of the Glocester Catholic win. And that’s on me, I let them circle the Gloucester Catholic game on the calendar, and there’s going to be a natural bounce from that. Take nothing away from Haddonfield, they played excellent baseball that day and earned the win, they deserved it. But I kind of let them take their foot off the gas after beating Gloucester Catholic. And then the weather forced us to sit nine days before we played Eastern, and that was a 10-inning game that featured 33 strikeouts. I think the Delran loss woke us up because we had opportunities to win that game, and after we lost we had a team meeting and talked about the goals that were still in front of us,” Petragnani said. “We had put a lot of emphasis on ‘hanging a championship banner’ but after that loss we took the emphasis off hanging a banner and just coming to practice the next day and getting better. Our focus shifted from hanging a banner to getting better every day and doing the small things that help you get big things. We just focused on the every day, instead of the big picture, when the playoffs started.”
“We had a tremendous start to this season, but we hit that lull with a lot of rainy weather and cancellations. We ended up losing three out of four games during that time span leading into the playoffs,” Gable added. “That was definitely a big dip in our season, but we had that team camaraderie and the leadership to where everyone said, ‘alright, that’s it. We’re going to focus in and let’s go get what we wanted from Day One.’ We knew we were the best team in South Jersey, and we were going to prove that.”
Petragnani was looking for the offense to carry the Chiefs when the team needed it, and it didn’t disappoint in the playoffs. Cherokee beat Washington Township 6-2, Howell 10-0, Kingsway 11-1, Eastern 5-4 and Hillsborough 11-0 before blanking Westfield, 6-0, to win the state championship.
“We knew what the ultimate goal was and we knew we could reach it based on what we put on the field all season. We played the Washington Township game under some pressure and (Alex) Odud hit a three-run home run. Gable threw a runner out at the plate and (Brett) Jackson followed up the next inning with a leadoff home run, and I think that popped the pressure,” Petragnani said. “From that point on, we were very good and we thought we could beat anybody. There was definitely pressure in that Township game and it was visible, but they overcame it with the help of three players making big plays. That loosened everything up, and once we got past that game we were in good shape.
“I think we deserved the No. 1 seed, and we were the Group 4 favorite going into the playoffs. We had never been favored, and to carry it out was big for us. It was big for us to handle those expectations.”
Senior catcher Mason Kelleher had a tremendous season, hitting .391 with 31 RBIs, and Jackson, a junior second baseman, showed why he was an All-State selection by hitting .452 with 30 runs scored and 38 RBIs.
“I’m proud of what (guys like Jackson and Kelleher) did this year. They were both huge contributors,” Gable said. “Obviously, offensively, but also on the defensive side and from a leadership position, they were huge and it’s about time they got some recognition because they really had a breakout year this season.”
Up and down the lineup, guys hit. Brett Chiesa had 34 hits and 27 runs scored; sophomore Odud hit .395 with 32 runs scored and 20 RBIs; Radbill hit .350; senior first baseman Nathan Linden quietly hit .326 with 22 runs scored and 14 RBIs; and even No. 9 hitter Steve Barbagiovanni hit .373 with 17 RBIs.
Cherokee hit .333 as a team, scoring 220 runs in 31 games, and had a team ERA of 1.48. That’s a pretty good formula for winning a state championship.
Now all that’s left to do is get fitted for rings. And try to run it back again in 2026.
“It was amazing. We put a lot of work in during the offseason, preparing our lineup. We lost some key positions (from 2024) so we had to fill some spots and we needed some guys to step up,” Gable said. “From a captain’s perspective and as a senior, seeing a lot of guys step up and take on roles that could lead us to a state championship was amazing.”
“I’ve become ridiculously emotional since I had children. I was never this emotional in the past. My kids know it. I got emotional at the banquet a few times. It’s just the thrill of a coach’s lifetime to be able to coach a team like this, and pull off the ultimate goal,” Petragnani added. “I will never forget it. We’ll be beaming with pride to hang that banner at halftime of some basketball game in December or January, when the seniors are back. I’m sure I’ll get emotional again at that point. It makes all the work you we put in worth it. It makes your career to have something like this. Now, we have to try to figure out how to do it again, because two in a row is a different story.”
