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Gateway fielding new opportunities
College to sponsor baseball, softball teams in spring
By Brian Dzenis
YOUNGSTOWN
Eastern Gateway Community College is making the jump into the world of collegiate athletics.
Starting in the 2017-18 academic year, the Steubenville-based college with a branch campus in Youngstown will begin sponsoring a baseball and softball team, college President Jimmy Bruce announced on Thursday.
Former Youngstown State head baseball coach and Colorado Rockies scout John Zizzo is the school’s first athletic director. He and Bruce had been in talks of starting a sports program for a year, with the Gator as its mascot.
“We thought it would bring in a whole new group of kids that would otherwise not have an opportunity to play college sports,” Zizzo said. “Being the only junior college in the area, the conversation grew and it became more popular and there’s a lot of interest form players that want to come here.”
Both teams are currently without places to play and head coaches. On the baseball side, Class B baseball coach Mike Cefalde and Phil Panno, one of Zizzo’s former players from the 1970s, have agreed to be volunteer assistants with the team. For softball, the school is in talks with Youngstown on using its facilites.
The Gators will be in Division III of the National Junior College Athletic Association as a member of the Ohio Community College Athletic Conference. The teams will be on probation for their first season — meaning their results won’t count — but they could apply to be in the playoffs should they play well enough to qualify. They play in a non-athletic scholarship division.
“We have a Gateway Grant for students coming out of high school in the Mahoning Valley area. If they maintain a 2.5 GPA, they get tuition paid for,” Bruce said. “While we don’t give out athletic scholarships we do have the opportunity to help people with their tuition if they’re in this area.
“And we do that for all students,” Bruce added.
If things go well with the two spring sports, the school would look to add men’s and women’s basketball. Should the funds come together, the teams would likely call Steubenville home, but there’s no timetable for those additions, Zizzo said.
EGCC is Zizzo’s first athletic director job after 45 years as a baseball coach and scout. He said he was intrigued by the challege of getting an athletic program off the ground and so are his longtime baseball friends, Cefalde and Panno.
“It’s a grassroots effort, it’s all this Youngstown baseball guys that started this,” Zizzo said. “Everybody here is going to be a part-timer or a volunteer. No one is making money on this. We felt that it would be something great for the kids and the community.”