The long drought is over for the Pine Bush baseball team.

The No. 1 seeded Bushmen captured the school’s first Section 9 Class AA baseball title since 2006 with a 6-4 victory over No. 2 Kingston Sunday at Cantine Field.

Nick Croce and Josh Martin each had two-run homers for Pine Bush (17-4) and starting pitcher Joe Gleason held the Tigers (15-7) in check through five innings to pick up the win. Alex Bucolo pitched the final two innings to wrap up the big win for the Bushmen.

Croce said winning the sectional title was a dream come true.

“It’s great,” he said. “I’ve played with a bunch of these kids since I was growing up. That’s all we’ve been talking about. It’s great to be moving on to the state tournament. I think we have a good chance to take it home.”

Pine Bush jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on Marc Cancelliere’s RBI double.

Croce’s long homer over the left-field fence gave the Bushmen a 3-0 lead after two innings.

Pine Bush added another run in the third to pad its lead to 4-0. Jack Gandolfini reached base when Kingston right fielder Joey Manginelli misplayed his fly ball and he scored on Mike DeSena’s sacrifice fly to deep center.
The Tigers pulled to within 4-2 with single runs in the fourth and fifth innings.

Kingston lost St. Bonaventure University-bound Evan Dieter to a leg injury he suffered sliding into second base in the top of the fifth.

Kingston knocked Gleason out of the game in the sixth when Manginelli had a leadoff single and Jake Crantz walked.

Bucolo walked Bradley Clark to load the bases, but the righty wiggled out of the jam with two strikeouts and a Logan Hart fly out to deep center. Cancelliere made a nice one-handed catch at the warning track to retire Hart.

After Connor Stacklum had a base hit to start the bottom of the Pine Bush sixth, Martin provided two insurance runs with a mammoth two-run homer over the center-field fence for a 6-2 lead.

Kingston clawed back to within 6-4 on Crantz’s two-run double in the top of the seventh. But Clark’s foul popup ended the rally and the game.

Croce said a solid lineup top to bottom made Pine Bush a difficult team to pitch to this season.

“We put the bat on the ball this season,” he said. “By the fifth game of the season, we really starting hitting well. When we beat Kingston 5-0 earlier this year, that was a turnaround game for us. The win over Kingston definitely gave us momentum and we saw how special our team was. We lost to Kingston (9-4) a couple of weeks ago, but we knew we were going to beat them today.”

Pine Bush will receive a bye into the next round. It will meet the winner of Section 1 Ketcham and Section 4 Horseheads Saturday at a site to be determined.