Bayside athlete leaves mark on DAC

When Derek Jeter, playing for Team USA, helped beat the New York Yankees in an exhibition game on March 3, the result was seen as yet another example of the captain’s victory-making intangibles. Some people, the adage goes, are just winners.
Count Jordan Mittenthal among that special company. The Bayside High School sophomore won DePhillips Athletic Club titles in three different sports in three consecutive seasons. Last spring, he was the winning pitcher in his league’s championship baseball game. Last fall, he played quarterback and led his football team to a better finish than 13 others. This past winter, his three-point shooting helped carry his basketball squad to yet another first-place result.
Mittenthal’s feat marks the first time in DAC history that an athlete has won a championship in three consecutive seasons.
“Everything came together this year,” he said. “I was surrounded by not only good players and coaches but also good friends, some old and some new, and that made it even more fun.”
Mittenthal is a longtime participant in the DAC’s athletic programs, which will soon be celebrating their 60th anniversary. The organization, started as an enormously popular Bayside baseball club in 1950, offers leagues for children from ages five to 18 in Bayside, Whitestone, Flushing, Little Neck, and Douglaston. It also arranges events such as trips to Knicks games at Madison Square Garden; 190 players and family members attended the most recent excursion.
The DAC made Courier headlines last year, when the group’s top flag football team was invited to Disney’s Wide World of Sports to represent the Greater New York region at the NFL Youth Flag Football Tournament of Champions.
“While the competition [at the DAC] is always good and the games [are] sometimes very intense, when the game is over we all go back to being good friends when we see each other in school, [at the] park, or even at the shopping center,” Mittenthal said.
Coming up next for the 15-year-old? His DAC Baseball Senior season. We’ll be watching closely.