Wilmington Baseball Earns League Title, Sophomore Pitcher Gillis Continues to Star

The Wilmington High School baseball team is back atop the Middlesex League. Playing a big part in that success is a powerful left arm.

After missing the postseason last year, the Wildcats bounced back this year and on Monday clinched the Freedom League regular season title thanks to a 10-2 pounding of Stoneham.

Fittingly, sophomore Jackson Gillis was at the center of the attack as he fired a complete game with one earned run, four hits allowed, and 16 strikeouts. At the plate he was 4-for-4 with a home run and three runs batted in.

Gillis has been an absolute force this season, which isn't a major surprise considering he piled up 15 strikeouts last year in his first ever varsity start.

During six starts in the current campaign, Gillis is 5-2 with a jaw-dropping 86 strikeouts in 43.1 innings pitched, going along with an earned run average of 1.16.

ESPNBoston.com spotlighted Gillis in a Tuesday feature. In the article, the media outlet reported that major colleges already have early interest in the left hander.

The list of schools expressing interest in Gillis includes LSU, North Carolina, Duke, Vanderbilt, Boston College, Wake Forest and Pitt, according to ESPNBoston.

The exciting part for Wilmington head coach Aldo Caira is that the best may be yet to come from his ace.

“Now that he’s doing what he’s doing, he’s maturing, and hopefully that’s what he’ll do next year and the year after,” Caira said, according to ESPNBoston. “So that by the time he’s a senior he’ll be a monster out there.”

Click here to read the ESPNBoston story on Gillis in its entirety.