N.H. baseball: Milestone win for Winnacunnet head coach Aaron Abood
Aaron Abood won his 100th game as head coach of the Winnacunnet High School baseball team on Saturday, a 7-0 win at Salem.
SALEM - Aaron Abood's first two years as head coach with the Winnacunnet High School baseball program were not the greatest. When Abood was an assistant coach at Winnacunnet in May 2016, the Warriors snapped a 30-game losing streak as then-freshman Shawn Sears struck out four and pitched Winnacunnet to a 10-5 win at home over Timberlane. The win not only snapped a losing streak that went back to the 2014 season, but it also marked that better days were ahead.
Abood was later named head coach for the 2017 season, replacing Jared Liebenow. Ten years and five days after the 30-game losing streak was snapped, Abood earned his 100th career win at Winnacunnet as the Warriors shut out Salem, 7-0 on Saturday, May 16 in a Division I game. Winnacunnet improved to 9-4 on the season.
Winnacunnet went 2-17 in 2017, and 4-14 in 2018 for a combined total of 6-31 in Abood's first two years. The Warriors have made the Division I tournament every year since, reaching the quarterfinal round in each of the past five seasons. "Obviously, the beginnning was rough," Abood said.
"Winnacunnet baseball was in a tough spot, but in the last seven or eight years we had a lot of good players. We had a couple Gatorade Players of the Year, and a couple of runs to the championship game. Clearly, there were a lot of good players that stayed in Hampton, stayed at Winnacunnet and played for us in the last seven or eight years.