Brian Mazzone believes in jinxes. So when he handed a bunch of signs commemorating Enfield baseball coach Jay Gaucher’s 500th win to one of the players on the bench in the top of the seventh inning in Monday’s game against RHAM , he thought he might have done so too early, even though Enfield was up by four runs.
“I believe I’m a jinx on everything – stand in the wrong place, it’s a jinx,” said Mazzone, Enfield’s assistant baseball coach. “So top of the seventh, I tell one of the kids on the bench, ‘When we win, you need to pass these out.’
“Then they got bases loaded with one out, I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me.’”
He laughed. It worked out. Relief pitcher Ryan Senn ended the game with a strikeout and a pop up, and Enfield won 4-0. Players surprised Gaucher by dumping ice on him and everybody posed with the 500-win signs.
The 500 wins are across four sports – football, softball, girls basketball and baseball, all of which Gaucher has coached at Enfield High for over 27 years.
Mazzone, who played football for Gaucher when he was a student at Enfield High and has known him since 1993, is a numbers guy. He has coached baseball with Gaucher for the last seven years and started wondering how many wins the head coach had.
So he did some research. Gaucher coached football from 2000-2015, softball from 2001-03, girls basketball from 2017-now and baseball from 2004-2013 and 2017 until now. Mazzone looked up everything, even finding conference tournament wins, and discovered that last week, Gaucher had a total of 498 wins.
The Eagles (14-6) lost to Hall Thursday but beat Lewis Mills 5-2 Friday for 499. RHAM (17-2) stood in the way Monday, and Enfield had already lost to the Raptors, 5-4, on May 3.
Gaucher had no idea what was going on but Mazzone told the kids and invited Gaucher’s wife and two daughters to the game. Some of the girls basketball players also showed up.
“It was cool because honestly I’ve never looked at my record coaching,” Gaucher said. “I’ve just enjoyed coaching and working with kids and seeing them grow and have opportunities to win. It was nice that Brian sort of took the time and effort to go through all those records of baseball and softball and football, basketball, to figure out how many wins I was at.”
Jake Lubanski was the winning pitcher for Enfield on Monday (Said Gaucher: “He did a good job getting out of a few jams”). Junior Jack Raymond had a two-run single, sophomore Gavin Sampson and senior Ryan Dennis had RBI doubles in the last game of the regular season.
“I was just happy for them to finish out the season strong,” Gaucher said. “It’s a great group of young men. I’ve been blessed with some really good leaders with the young ladies and young men I’ve coached.”
Gaucher started coaching football first, then in 2001, the school needed a softball coach so he took over that job for a few years. He had played baseball and knew it better than softball, which he enjoyed, but when the baseball job opened up, he took it. He remembers coaching Andrea Silva in softball, who is Enfield’s current softball coach.
His girls basketball teams were his most successful, advancing to the state semifinals five times, including four times between 2015-2018. He has 183 wins in that sport.
Gaucher’s two daughters, a sixth grader and a sophomore, play high-level sports so there is a lot of juggling involved with his family.
“My wife Stacey has been a saint through this,” Gaucher said. “Without her, this would have never happened. This spring has been crazy but we’ve made it work. I appreciate my family being flexible.”
Mazzone, who has coached with and against Gaucher over the years was just happy to honor his friend.
“He doesn’t often get recognized,” Mazzone said. “I think when someone does good things, it needs to be recognized.”
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