Playing spoiler: Burgettstown ends Fort Cherry’s bid for unbeaten season
BURGETTSTOWN – Bryce Speer jogged in from center field to the pitcher’s mound with a look of someone determined to finish the job.
For six innings Burgettstown had outplayed Fort Cherry, but with two runners on and nobody out the Rangers had a glimmer of hope.
Then Speer took the ball and shut the door by getting the final three outs and ending Fort Cherry’s bid at an undefeated season.
The Blue Devils defeated the Rangers 5-2 in the Class 2A Section 1 finale on a blustery Tuesday afternoon at Burgettstown Community Park.
“My team believed in me, so I wanted to come in and throw strikes for my team,” Speer said. “Earlier in the year we had a couple of struggles, but we overcame that and got a big win today. This is a big statement for all of Class 2A. We’re going into the playoffs with some momentum.”
Fort Cherry finished the regular season 11-1 in section and 16-1 overall. Burgettstown is 6-6 in section and 8-10 overall.
Speer relieved Matthew Bredel, who had a fine outing on senior day. He reached the pitch count limit in the top of the seventh after yielding a leadoff double to Colton Temple and a single to Ben Demascal.
Speer got a big strikeout of Ryan Huey for the first out.
“I gave him three outside fastballs,” Speer said. “The first two were on the corner for strikes and the last one was a bit low, but he swung at it. I’ll take it.”
Blake Sweder hit a sacrifice fly that scored Temple for the second out. Then, Speer got Tyler Wolfe to hit a soft line drive back to him and he snagged it for the final out before celebrating with catcher Colton County.
“We weren’t going to let them come into our house and beat us,” Speer said. “Yesterday we were up 6-0 against them and even though we lost it gave us confidence that we could do this.”
Bredel recorded only one strikeout in six innings, but he made big pitches when he needed them. He stranded nine baserunners, including the bases loaded in the fourth inning. He got Landon Trnavsky to fly out to right field to escape the jam.
He also had two hits and scored two runs. Bredel was thrilled to have played a big role in ending the Rangers’ undefeated season.
“This is awesome,” Bredel said. “This is all I had dreamed about all year was beating this team. I knew it was going to be tough, but I also knew we could compete with them and we showed that today.”
Fort Cherry scored the first run in the top of the third when Temple ripped a single to center field to score Landon Trnavsky, who had hit a one-out single in the previous at-bat and moved to second on a wild pitch.
Burgettstown responded with two runs in the bottom half. Bredel led off the inning with a single and later scored on an RBI single to right field by Jayden Roach.
Roach stole second and moved to third after the throw bounced away from the Fort Cherry middle infielders. That set up Blake Neal to drive him in with a single.
“We had watched some of their recent games and they had been slow coming out to start and came on strong at the end, so we knew we had to get on them early,” Bredel said. “We wanted to put on the pressure and maybe rattle them a little bit.”
Burgettstown applied pressure in the fifth and was rewarded with three runs. Owen Snyder and Bredel hit back-to-back singles to put . Caleb Matalik dropped down a sacrifice bunt and the throw went wide of first base. That allowed one run to score and put runners on second and third with no one out. Danny Smith, who was the courtesy runner for Bredel scored on another error and Matalik came into score on a wild pitch.
The mistakes in the field were too much for Fort Cherry to overcome.
“Sooner or later you’re going to have a loss, but it still sucks,” Fort Cherry coach Bob Sawhill said. “They played a good game and we didn’t. That’s really all there is to it.”
After the game the Burgettstown seniors scooped up some dirt from the infield and put it in jars to take with them. They’ll also have the memory of beating their biggest rival in their final home game.
Fort Cherry had eight hits, but committed four errors, and though they won’t finish unbeaten, Sawhill said it could be a blessing in disguise as they prepare for the playoffs.
“It’s tough to lose to a rival, but it could benefit us going forward,” Sawhill said. “We were getting away with things we had no business doing and this time we didn’t get away with it.”
Both teams will learn where they land in the WPIAL Class 2A bracket when the pairings are released on Friday.