Three local teams aiming for spot in state semifinals
For the first time in 40 years, the Fort Cherry baseball team won a state playoff game when they traveled to District 5 champion Everett on Monday and secured a 1-0 victory.
The Rangers don’t want their historic season to end there.
They are aiming for a spot in the state semifinals.
Fort Cherry plays District 10 champion Mercyhurst Prep in the PIAA Class 2A quarterfinals, 1 p.m. Thursday at Slippery Rock’s Jack Critchfield Park.
Chartiers-Houston and Bentworth softball are also playing quarterfinals games on Thursday.
The victory came on the heels of the Rangers making the WPIAL finals for the first time since 1986 and was a solid rebound after a tough day at EQT Park.
Not much went right for Fort Cherry in their 11-2 loss to Neshannock. It was a game where the team committed five errors.
But they responded quite well and did not commit an error in the win over Everett.
To say it was a pitcher’s dual might be an understatement.
There were only four hits in the game and the only run scored happened three batters into the game.
Landon Trnavsky singled to lead off the game and stole second base. With one out, Colton Temple singled to right field to score Trnavsky for the game’s lone run.
Fort Cherry did not have a hit the rest of the game.
The Rangers coaching staff opted to go with Temple as the starting pitcher and the right-hander rewarded them with six strong innings of two-hit ball.
He struck out five and walked three.
“We had a lot of faith in him,” Fort Cherry coach Bob Sawhill said of Temple. “It just seemed like the best lineup we could put out there at that point in time.”
Temple got into a little bit of trouble in the seventh and left-hander Dylan Lueck came in to close the game out.
Everett loaded the bases with one out, but Lueck got Levi Cornell to hit a pop up on the infield that invoked the infield fly rule for the second out and Spencer Shaw to ground into a fielder’s choice to shortstop Ben Demascal.
It was a nice moment and a bit of redemption for Demascal, who had a tough day in the WPIAL final committing four errors.
“I was so happy for him that he got the last out after the errors he had in the WPIAL championship,” Sawhill said. “He was so upset after the WPIAL championship that he didn’t go to the awards ceremony we had the next morning at Fort Cherry. There were a couple other ones that didn’t go too. I talked to (Demascal) a little bit and he was ready to go (Monday). He did a great job.”
Fort Cherry’s next opponent, Mercyhurst Prep is 21-2 and beat Riverview, 4-0, in the first round. The Rangers knocked off Riverview, 4-2, in the WPIAL semifinals.
The Lakers were a state semifinalist last year. They have three players in their lineup hitting .480 or better.
Zach Kruszewski, a Pitt-Bradford recruit, is hitting .576 with seven doubles, a pair of triples and homers and has 20 RBI. Hayden Spencer has a .500 batting average and Cameron Aresco is hitting .483.
Lakers’ ace Hunter Krahe, a Charleston Southern recruit, pitched Monday, but they have a pretty strong No. 2 pitcher in Brady Rice.
Rice is 5-1 with a 2.82 ERA. He has 75 walks to 18 strikeouts in 39.2 innings pitched.
Softball
WPIAL champ Bentworth faces District 5 champ Everett in the Class 2A quarterfinals at 4 p.m. at Somerset High School.
The Bearcats (23-2) took care of business in the first round with a 10-0 win over District 10 runner up Wilmington in the first round.
LSU recruit Sydney Gonglik pitched a six-inning perfect game with a dozen strikeouts and her battery mate Zoie McDonald contributed three hits and plated four runs.
Everett (19-4) had to sweat out a closer result, edging District 9’s Cranberry, 9-7, in the first round.
The Warriors led 7-0 after two innings, but had to hold off a late comeback by Cranberry.
Morgan Bowser had a three-run homer in a six-run second inning for Everett.
Chartiers-Houston continues its journey on the eastern side of the Class 2A bracket with a game against District 2 champ Montrose at 3 p.m. at Bald Eagle Area High School in Bellefonte.
A win would put the Bucs in the state semifinals for the third straight year.
The Bucs (19-3) defeated District 6 champion Bellwood-Antis 2-0 on a three-hit shutout by Taryne Drilak.
Montrose (18-2) has one of the more unique nicknames in the PIAA: The Meteors.
They shut out Northwest Area, 5-0, in the first round.
Alayna Mott pitched a five-hit shutout with six strikeouts and Libby Bush had three hits and an RBI.