After three years of manning the left side of Orange’s infield, Joey Berini’s hard work has paid off.
Berini has committed to East Carolina. he made the official announcement on Twitter last month. Since his freshman season, Berini had also been recruited by UNC Asheville, Western Carolina and North Carolina Central.
“I’ve always wanted to play baseball at East Carolina,” Berini said. “It is just a great school to go to.”
Berini was the 2019 Big 8 Conference Player of the Year. He led the team in five offensive categories, including a .541 batting average. Berini also led the team in hits (33), runs scored (35), doubles (12) and triples (4).
Berini reached the decision to attend East Carolina following a face-to-face meeting with Pirates head coach Cliff Godwin in Greenville.
“We had a great time on their campus tour,” Berini said. “I also talked with North Carolina last week. I talked to East Carolina a couple of times last fall and started talking to them again after the State Games.”
Berini has started at shortstop since his freshman year in 2017, a year of transition for the Orange baseball program. Bryse Wilson, now with the Atlanta Braves, had graduated the previous spring after setting the school record with 33 career wins. Wilson’s longtime catcher, Brad Debo, had also graduated and left for N.C. State.
Together, the two led Orange to four consecutive Big 8 Conference Championships.
In 2017, Berini hit .274. Orange, which was 9-11 on April 22, finished the season with a surprising run in the playoffs with road wins at West Johnston and South Johnston. They were two outs away from the state quarterfinals before West Brunswick’s Garrison Gause hit a game-tying homer in the 7th inning, the second home run hit inside the Trojans ballpark that season. Gause’s father died the previous week from cancer. West Brunswick went on to win 2-1 in nine innings. Berini hit safely in four of the last five games in 2017.
In 2018, Berini led Orange with a .369 batting average as Orange finished 13-11. He tied Jaydin Poteat and Jason Slaughter for the team-lead with 24 hits. Berini also had a team-high nine doubles as Orange defeated Jacksonville 6-2 in the opening round of the 3A state playoffs.
Berini is the 2nd player from Orange’s Class of 2020 to commit to play at a four-year college. In 2017, Cooper Porter announced he would attend N.C. State, which may lead to several head-to-head matchups with Berini in the future.
After the Wolfpack and the Pirates faced each other in the Greenville Regional of the NCAA Baseball Tournament last month, there was considerable discussion within the college baseball community about why the two rivals don’t play each other during the regular season. Perhaps in response, Godwin tweeted that N.C. State coach Elliott Avent had reached out about scheduling the Pirates.
Godwin said the two school would do their best to play in 2020, but if it didn’t happen next year, it would happen in 2021.
Berini is the son of Joe and Kim Berini, who live in Rougemont. His younger brother, Jackson, fittingly played shortstop for the Stanford Middle School Chargers last spring.