Cornette shines as SCA pitcher

When the toughest pitching challenges have come this season for Suffolk Christian Academy’s baseball team, Knights coach Tommy Moose has wanted Michael Cornette on the mound.

For example, when the Knights went down 8-1 after two innings against visiting Brunswick Academy on April 28, Moose put the junior thrower on the mound.

Cornette held the Vikings to three hits and no runs, while SCA’s offense took advantage of Brunswick errors and the Knights somehow turned the tables, running away with an 18-8 mercy rule-shortened win.

His role in the incredible comeback earned Cornette the title of Duke Automotive-Suffolk News-Herald Player of the Week.

Of his performance against Brunswick, Cornette said, “I felt pretty good about it. It really didn’t hit me that it was against such a good team until about two or three days after, when we were talking about it in practice.”

Going into the game, the Vikings were ranked seventh in the state at the Division III level of the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association, and prior to that, they had been ranked as high as fourth.

Suffolk Christian has taken on the challenge of playing several VISAA teams from different division levels this season, and generally, Cornette has been the one facing them on the mound.

Norfolk Christian School ended as the runner-up in the Tidewater Conference of Independent Schools tournament this year, and SCA faced the Ambassadors on April 7. The Knights played them close, narrowly falling 3-2 as Cornette threw all seven innings.

“We didn’t hit the ball great, but his pitching gave us a chance,” Moose said.

Cornette also did well against Peninsula Catholic High School on March 19, despite the 4-3 loss for Suffolk Christian.

“I put him in some tough, tough situations, and he’s come through all year on the mound for us,” Moose said.

Though Cornette is attending Suffolk Christian this year, he has spent most of his life as a home school student. And while it may not have been part of the official curriculum, baseball is taught to anyone living in the Cornette household.

Michael Cornette said he got his start in baseball “when I was probably right out of the womb.”

“My dad would always sit on the couch and watch Orioles baseball,” he said, and if not that, he would be listening to games on the radio.

Cornette said he fell in love with the sport “when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

His father, Scott Cornette, admitted, “If he didn’t like the sport, I don’t know what I’d do,” because he and his wife, Stephanie Cornette, are so into it.

Michael’s love of baseball and time spent studying it with his dad have made him better on the diamond and have bonded father and son.

“I think that’s what brought me and my dad really close together was baseball,” he said.

“It’s just been kind of a bond between us,” Scott Cornette said.

The elder Cornette serves as an assistant coach for the Knights and has been pleased with his son’s play this season.

“He just has really kind of come into his own this year,” he said. “There’s no question that he’s a student of the game.”