Aug 15, 2025 5 min read

By Dale Lolley

For the Observer-Reporter

newsroom@observer-reporter.com

It’s hard to express the disappointment involved in Washington County not keeping the Pony League World Series championship at home this week.

No, not disappointment in the players, manager JP Przybylinski and his coaching and support staff. They gave their all and played an excellent tournament.

The disappointment involved is for that group of young players and coaches. They were as close as any Washington County team in 70 years to winning the tournament, leading 3-0 in the bottom of the fifth inning of the championship game.

But, as so many teams have learned over the years while playing against the Asia-Pacific champions, you just can’t make mistakes against those teams. They almost always take advantage.

Washington County had one bad inning in the entire 2025 World Series, and it wound up costing it a chance at immortality.

It happens.

A strong argument could be made that Washington County was the best team in the tournament. It lost just once, that coming 6-4 in the finale.

And that’s to take nothing away from Chinese-Tapei, which lost its first game and won its way to the championship by not losing again. That showed great resilience and that the Asia-Pacific champion was a deserving winner.

It’s just hard to stomach having one bad inning cost a tournament championship in what turned out to be a team’s lone loss.

But the rules are the rules. Everyone knew them when the tournament began. Washington County will have to settle for playing one heck of a tournament.

• This was the second time in three years that Washington County has made the championship. It won’t be the last. A championship will come … soon.

And it’s great to still see local fans show up to support the boys.

When we put the Founders League together 12 years ago, we weren’t quite sure what to expect in terms of fan support.

The tournament had involved only Washington players for so long, it was tough the first couple of seasons to get players from outside Washington Youth Baseball’s boundaries to buy into the tournament and try out.

This year, nearly 60 players tried out. And the results were evident on the field. That was a team more than capable of competing on an international level.

The key moving forward continues to be getting Washington County’s best and most talented players to all try out and want to be a part of something bigger than most of them will ever compete in again.

It’s a heck of an honor to be chosen as one of the top 15 players from that 21-team league. And there were easily other players who could have been on that team that didn’t make it. It was a difficult process choosing the 15 players.

It’s what we envisioned when WYB president Rick Herrnberger, former Canon-McMillan Youth Baseball President Rich Egezio and I sat down so long ago to draw the whole thing up.

At first, it was just Washington and Canon-McMillan. And those teams were good. They competed well.

But adding the Route 50 organization, with the help of Route 50 president Troy Elich, and then bringing in the Mon Valley teams two years ago has been the icing on the cake.

We would love to have the entire county take part in the Founders League, but that just hasn’t worked out to this point.

The bottom line, however, is that the product on the field has been excellent. The teams have been extremely competitive. They have made al of us proud.

• Not going to lie. I had tears in my eyes around 9:15 p.m. Wednesday night when Washington took a 3-0 lead.

This is my final season as president of the Founders League. Health concerns have forced me to step away.

And it’s not that I wanted a championship for me, but I wanted one for those boys and all the ones who came before them and will come after.

It will happen, but I hate having to wait another year for one.

The program and organizations are left in good hands.

• The Steelers broke training camp last week, making it through the dog days at Saint Vincent College rather uneventfully.

When we say uneventfully, we’re not talking about contracts or any of that stuff. Those things get taken care of in time.

In this case, uneventfully means no season-ending injuries.

This is a deep and talented Steelers roster. But injuries can derail any team, especially front-line injuries before the games even start.

Now for head coach Mike Tomlin, it’s a matter of guiding his team through two more preseason games and getting it to the regular season in good health.

If the Steelers can do that, they will make a lot of noise in the AFC this season.

Dale Lolley hosts The Drive on Steelers Nation Radio and writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter. He is former longtime president of Washington Youth Baseball’s Pony Division and the Founders League.