Holliston baseball honors program alum Corey Ciarcello, who died in February at 30

HOLLISTON — Hanging in the dugout during every Holliston High School baseball game is a red jersey bearing the No. 20. It was the jersey of 2009 Holliston alum Corey Ciarcello, who died on February 28 of this year from a seizure. Ciarcello was only 30.

"He was a great kid, great heart," said Holliston senior Chris Cordani following the Panthers' 8-7 loss to Dover-Sherborn Wednesday afternoon. "Just a freak thing happened and we thought it would be a nice thing to have another jersey hanging up for us like the person is on our side."

For Panthers coach Joe Santos, Ciarcello's death hits closer to home.

"He was in my sister's wedding," Santos said of Ciarcello. "He was best friends with my brother-in-law (Pat Tehan)."

Santos also coached Corey's younger brothers, Brody and Tucker.

"It was really hard on my family," Santos said. "Definitely a really sad experience and for kid that is younger than me to pass away, it's hard to wrap my head around."

Santos first played with Ciarcello when he was a senior in high school. Ciarcello was a sophomore and would bounce between JV and varsity that season.

"He was a talented kid," Santos recalled. "We were very senior heavy my senior year and there weren't really many underclassman on the team but he was that swing guy because he was pretty talented. Had a strong arm and was a good pitcher."

Prior to the season, Santos brought up the idea of hanging Ciarcello's jersey number in the dugout to one of his senior captains.

"He was all for it," Santos said. "He thought it was a great idea."

The thought process behind the jersey is that Santos noticed that Holliston has lacked some camaraderie and brotherhood in recent years. He felt that hanging a jersey of a former Panther would provide a renewed sense of purpose while also doing something nice and positive for a grieving family.

"I thought that this would be a great opportunity to honor a former Panther while also playing for something bigger than themselves," Santos said. "It really showed the guys that once you play for this program, you are always going to be a Panther."

To begin the season, Holliston won four of its first five games. Santos sees purposefully honoring the memory of Ciarcello playing some part in that strong start. That focus tends to wane, however, as the Panthers soon lost four straight games.

"The youth and immaturity started to show," said Santos, whose team is now 7-6. "We started looking ahead and lost four straight. We got away from what we had been preaching."

Once it got back to that mindset, Holliston began winning again coming out victorious in its next three games.

That winning streak was snapped on Thursday as the Raiders overcame a 7-1 deficit through four innings of play. Dover-Sherborn then exploded for seven runs in the fifth as they took advantage of Panther miscues to take an 8-7 lead that they did not relinquish.

"We jumped out to a good lead and we kind of got complacent," Santos said. "You can tell our attitude and focus level was not the same and we got lackadaisical.

"Credit to D-S, they took advantage of it. We made mistakes and they took advantage of every mistake," he added. "We just got to find ways to minimize damage and not let up seven runs in an inning."

Leo Pucci drove in the tying run with his second single of the inning followed by Jack Potter's RBI single that gave the Raiders (6-5) the lead.

"The whole season we've battled through injuries," Potter said. "To come back today I think gives us a good spark gearing up for playoffs and it gets us back above .500."

Ethan Winter is a senior multimedia sports journalist at the Daily News. He can be reached at ewinter@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @EWints.

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Dover-Sherborn baseball comes from behind to beat Holliston