AMSTERDAM — March is both Women’s History Month and National Athletic Training Month. The Amsterdam Mohawks will have to budget for two cakes this month, as general manager Megan Myers and athletic trainer Carla Pasquarelli play a big part in making the Mohawks the gold standard of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League.
Both are driven to deliver results, foremost, but they’re also local and still here, which means they’re invested.
‘CARLA IS FROM AMSTERDAM. SHE’S NEVER LEAVING AMSTERDAM’
Pasquarelli, an Amsterdam High School graduate, is also the full-time athletic trainer for the Amsterdam school district. She started as a trainer at St. Mary’s Hospital in 2009, and then worked per diem with the school in 2010. She’s been full-time there for about five years.
“My ultimate goal was always to come back and give the kids of Amsterdam High School, ultimately, what we never had,” she said.
She began working with the Mohawks in 2011, when they joined the PGCBL.
“And I was only here for home games, so it was a weird feeling,” Pasquarelli said. “They would go on the road and there was a little disconnect. Something would happen and I wouldn’t know what was going on. And we didn’t really have the treatment hours we have now.”
So she pitched an idea to president Brian Spagnola in 2013, as she remembers it: Give the players what they’re used to at their colleges — and many of them came from Division I institutions. That meant traveling to road games, treatment hours and the like.
“They would get hurt, they would go home,” she explained. “Now when they get hurt, they don’t necessarily go home. They rehab with us, we take care of them. They stay, and I think that’s been a huge reason why we’ve been so successful. We’ve been able to keep those kids and the consistency of the team. Instead of, ‘Hey, let’s pull this guy in, [because] we lost that guy.’ It’s the same core, pretty much, from May 30 to August whenever.”
Saying the Mohawks have been successful is akin to saying Billy Joel is an OK singer. They’ve won the PGCBL eight times in 14 years, finished second in 2018 and 2021, and didn’t play in the pandemic-cancelled 2020 season.
Pasquarelli remembers the first athlete with whom her pitch to Spagnola paid off. Dylan Smith, from Auburn University, got injured the second day of practice, but didn’t tell coach Keith Griffin or Pasquarelli at first. Then in the first game of the year, he pulled his unbeknownst-injured hamstring rounding first base.
“I said to him, ‘We can do this one of two ways. You just got here. You can go home or you can give me two weeks. We’ll get you out there right and get you playing.’ … And he came in every day religiously for rehab, treatment, did everything I asked. By the end of June, he was back playing, he was an all-star that year,” Pasquarelli said.
What everyone from Spagnola down through the on-field staff says is there are two goals with the Mohawks. One, they’ll make you better. Two, they won’t get you hurt, and if you do get hurt, go to Pasquarelli.
“I give them the speech that communication is key,” she said. “I can’t help you if you’re not telling me and our coaches what’s going on. Now, injuries happen, but as far as soreness and stuff, we offer those treatment hours. When they want to buy into it is key. That’s the goal working with this generation, is getting them to buy in.”
Naturally, Pasquarelli has encountered difficulties because she’s a female trainer.
“I always laugh at my first experience in a [Mohawks] game, it was with [now-Major Leaguer] Mark Leiter Jr.,” Pasquarelli recalled. “And we have a fantastic relationship now, but he’s such a competitor. Coach pulled him after four innings, and he’s mad. Coach sent him over to get ice. I went to put the ice on him, and he was so angry, so agitated, trying to wrap the ice on and it’s not staying on, it’s just falling off. I remember him looking at me and saying, ‘Do you even know what you’re doing? Are you even an actual athletic trainer?’ And I was just so defeated.
“He apologized after, and we worked together the rest of the season, and he showed me some of the stuff he was doing. Now here we are 15 years later, the boys know I’m in charge. And coach and Brian will tell them what Carla says, goes. I think as I’ve grown, I’ve gained that confidence that this is how it is, this is our plan and this is how it’s going to go. And they respect that.”
They respect Pasquarelli so much that many of them still message her to talk about their health.
“I think if you’re able to create and foster those relationships, long-term, that’s something special,” she said. “I think it speaks to us as an organization that they feel so connected to us.
If you ask [Griffin], he will tell you, ‘Carla is from Amsterdam. She’s never leaving Amsterdam.’ I kind of feel that way. It’s taken me this long to get ingrained into the school district, 18 years total, four, five years full-time now. And I love it. I love our administration and how supportive they are of the role of the athletic trainer, and the role I play within the school community.”
‘I’LL PUT IN MY TWO WEEKS NOTICE RIGHT NOW’
Myers is a Johnstown native and 2015 Johnstown graduate. She graduated from SUNY Brockport in 2019. The summer before her senior year in college, she interned with the Mohawks.
“I fell in love with the whole atmosphere of what this was, is now,” Myers said. “That’s when I decided I wanted to stay in the baseball realm.”
Her senior year of college, she interned at The Ripken Experience in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The director there loved her work, but didn’t have a job opening, but wrote a letter of recommendation to Old Dominion University to accept her for a master’s in sports management. Once she sent in the application, she was accepted the next day.
During her time there, she worked with the United States Collegiate Athletic Association as coordinator of marketing and events. After she graduated, she worked with the Albany FireWolves as account executive of ticket sales and operations in their initial 2021-22 season of the National Lacrosse League.
“Didn’t love it,” Myers said. “I was working in the ticket office, and I’m more of a hands-on person that needs to be out there interacting with everybody rather than making cold calls.
Brian was texting me one day, and I had already decided I was going to leave and find something new, and he asked, ‘What’s your salary?’ He and I had a great relationship. I texted him back and told him and said, ‘Why are you asking?’ He said, ‘Because I’m looking for an assistant [GM].’ I said, ‘I’ll put in my two weeks notice right now.’ And that’s how I got here.”
Myers was promoted to general manager after the 2024 season. She said the reason the Mohawks are so successful at drawing fans is devout attention to all aspects.
“We kind of weave it all together,” she said. “We want it to be a place where if you’re 2 years old all the way to 92, you can have a good time here. Coach can take care of the baseball side, whereas I can take care of the promotions and the sponsorships and the entertainment. Brian and I have the same mindset, and then we have Barry [Rouse] on the field.”
Myers said her mind is always racing with ways to improve the product.
“We never just want to settle for where we are. You’ll see that coming to games,” she said. “Whether it’s field or stadium-wise, seating-wise, signage-wise, we’re taking it to the next level. We want to be the top summer entertainment offering in the 518 [area code], not just Amsterdam. We have probably a million spreadsheets. From game to game, we have recaps of everything. What can we do better? What went wrong? What needs to work in the next 24 hours for our next home game?”
Myers, who is also the Johnstown varsity girls’ basketball head coach, also has had moments when she was met with bias because she’s a woman.
“Here,” Myers said, “if a fan is getting out of hand and I have to tell them something, they’re, like, ‘Well, who are you?’ Whereas if a male went up to them and said, ‘You’ve got to stop what you’re doing.’ They’d say, ‘OK.’
“So that’s the barrier I face, especially when I got this role,” she added. “I can’t let that happen anymore. It’s just the mentality of me approaching them that I am the general manager. It’s how I present myself to them to make that statement of this is who I am, and just because I’m a female doesn’t mean I’m any less than a male.”
She’s also had opposing basketball coaches walk up to her male assistant coach and shake his hand first and say, ‘How are you, coach?’
“My assistant coach is, like, ‘Nope, I’m just the assistant.’ He’s older than me, but it’s still… As a coach, I do all my research. Who’s the head coach, who’s the assistant coach? I need to know everything. It’s how people’s minds work sometimes. It’s just breaking that barrier.”
A WORD FROM SPAGNOLA
When asked about Pasquarelli and Myers, besides offering praise, Spagnola’s voice dropped into that sound like he was putting on a comfortable sweater. Since they are part of the organization, all is well.
“You don’t get there by yourself, you need people like them,” Spagnola said. “Carla is driven and very professional in what she does. … Megan is a Type A. She’ll be on vacation and sending work emails. She’s super-motivated, her heart is into it. They’ve become a part of the culture in what we do. People like them make you look good.”
THEY LIKE WHERE THEY ARE
Myers has seen women rise through the ranks of minor league and professional baseball; it would be impossible to not notice the once-glass ceiling has been broken. Likewise Pasquarelli, as highly regarded a trainer as there is, knows there are bigger opportunities out there.
But are they better opportunities? Myers and Pasquarelli aren’t so sure.
“I applaud all the females who are in those [higher] positions, but something about the Mohawks is why I came back,” said Myers. “What we do for the community, you can’t find that when you’re working for the New York Yankees. Yes, they do stuff with communities, but what we give back to not only Amsterdam and Johnstown and Gloversville, and seeing those little kids come back here and get so excited, it makes all the work I do throughout the summer worth it. That’s something I can’t give up.”
“Baseball’s always been a huge part of my life,” Pasquarelli said, “so when I got the opportunity to come work with the Mohawks, that was pretty much as close as you’re going to get to the major leagues from my perspective. Just like Megan, I love what we do for our community. … We’re our own little family.”