For Danny Wynne Bad Start, Good Finish to 2010-2011 School Year

Danny Wynne is looking forward this fall to his days working out at Bridgton Academy in Maine.

For Wynne the 2011-12 school year at the Maine prep academy is just a short detour for where he wants to be in 2013, playing baseball for the University of Rhode Island.

After transferring from Paramus Catholic to Hasbrouck Heights for the 2010-11 school year, he was on the precipice of gaining a scholarship at URI, but that hope took a serious detour last September.    

Wynne was just looking to stay in shape when he came out for the Hasbrouck Heights football team, a sport he never played before.
   
But at one of the practices he felt a pop and his senior season took a painful turn for the worse. "I just heard a pop and I walked home that night," said Wynne. "It hurt the next morning."
   
As it turned out he had torn his ACL and torn his meniscus in his knee. He would end up being out for almost nine months. In addition Wynne had to sit out 30 days before hitting the diamond.

With the loss of most of his senior season in baseball, his hope of playing at the University of Rhode Island was dashed.

But the coaching staff at URI advised him to go to Bridgton Academy, gain some experience and become 100 percent healthy so he could then head to Kingston, RI for the 2012-13 school year.

When he came back to the field during his senior year at Heights, he was not able to play the position that he loves, catcher, so he wound up serving as the Aviators designated hitter. He just wanted to get at least a bat in his hand. "I was just very happy to be on the field," said Wynne.

And he played huge dividends for Hasbrouck Heights especially in the state playoffs. The Aviators were the 13th seed in the Group 1 North 1 state playoffs, but started off with an impressive 18-3 beating of fourth-seeded Midland Park in the first round of the Group 1 North 1 state tournament. Wynne would go 4-for-4 with two home runs and six RBI to lead the way in the playoff victory.

With Wynne on the team the Aviators sprinted their way through the state playoffs and were a game away from making the Group 1 North 1 finals before they took on one of the best pitchers in the county in Emerson's Dave Palladino.

The result is that Wynne and the rest of Hasbrouck Heights were knocked out of the tournament, 9-0.

But Wynne would not have anything more considering how his senior year started with the injuries that he was just glad to contribute and get on the field in the black and orange. "I was very happy with how it went," said Wynne about his little more than a month on the baseball field for Heights.

And in that short period of time, Wynne earned an All North Jersey Interscholastic Conference honorable mention nod.

For the summer Wynne is still rehabbing and getting his knee as strong as possible while playing for a club baseball team in South Jersey and also third base, one of the other positions outside of catching that he enjoys. "It feels good going side to side," said Wynne last week.

During his three years at Paramus Catholic, Wynne played both catcher and third base before coming home to Hasbrouck Heights.

He said that he is targeting to play catcher when the season opens for Bridgton. "I like it because everything goes through you," said Wynne about playing catcher.

And it is about eight months until he gets to be behind the dish in Maine.