EmailEmail
PrintPrint
PIAA Baseball Semifinals: 3 from WPIAL reach title game
Serra, S. Fayette, Chartiers Valley play for first crown
Tuesday, June 09, 2009

The WPIAL will have three teams in the PIAA baseball championship games.

Chartiers Valley, South Fayette and Serra won semifinal games yesterday at different sites to advance to Friday's championship games at Blair County Ballpark in Altoona. It will be the first championship appearance for all three teams.

The only WPIAL team to lose yesterday was North Allegheny.

Class AAAA

• North Penn 12, North Allegheny 1: WPIAL champion North Allegheny (23-3) was no match for North Penn (19-6) in this semifinal at Green Township Park in Scotland.

North Penn, a District 1 team from suburban Philadelphia, handed North Allegheny pitcher Ryan Oglesby (9-1) his first loss of the season. Oglesby was pulled after giving up a leadoff single in the third inning. He was charged with four earned runs.

North Penn finished with 13 hits off four North Allegheny pitchers. The Knights led, 6-1, after three innings and never looked back.

North Allegheny had only four hits and center fielder Jon Wilson had two, including a triple.

North Penn has won 13 of 14, but the Knights were the No. 5 team from District 1.

Class AAA

• Chartiers Valley 3, Bellefonte 1: Chartiers Valley (16-7) had only four hits in the semifinal game at White Township Complex in Indiana, but the Colts still did enough to earn a spot in the title game. Ken Terpack pitched 61/3 innings for Chartiers Valley and also had two hits.

Bellefonte (19-7) took a 1-0 lead in the second inning, but Chartiers Valley tied it in the second on Terpack's RBI single. In the fourth, Bellefonte starter Seth Tressler walked the first two Chartiers Valley batters and Ryan Landy later had a run-scoring single.

The Colts' final run came in the fifth inning on Dan Colavincenzo's bases-loaded walk.

Terpack had only one strikeout but allowed only five hits.

"He's a fighter on the mound. He'll battle you," Chartiers Valley coach Jim Jaskowski said. "He does just enough to get the ball off the sweet part of the bat. That's what he did today."

Bellefonte had runners on first and second with one out in the seventh, but reliever Corey Rekasie came on and got two outs to end the threat.

Class AA

• South Fayette 4, Mount Union 0: South Fayette junior pitcher Dillon Haviland turned his second consecutive outstanding performance to lead the Lions (18-5) past Mount Union (22-2) at the White Township Complex in Indiana.

In the first round of the PIAA playoffs last Monday, Haviland threw a no-hitter against Bald Eagle Area. Against Mount Union, he fired a two-hitter and struck out 15. He did not walk a batter.

"He was just overpowering them," South Fayette coach James Barton said. "He threw 85 to 90 percent fastballs and just mixed a little off-speed stuff in between."

For the season, the 6-foot-3, 210-pound left-hander is 7-4 with 136 strikeouts in 70 innings.

Zack Fettig had two doubles to lead South Fayette's offense. Haviland drove in South Fayette's first run with a groundout, and Chris Darby had an RBI single in the second. Ryan Ross scored on a groundout in the fifth and Lubin had a run-scoring single in the seventh.

Class AA

• Serra 5, Bishop McCort 4: Tyler Kugler threw out a runner at the plate for the final out of the game as Serra (23-3) held off Bishop McCort (19-5) at First Commonwealth Field in Homer City.

Rain delayed the game in the third inning for an hour and 45 minutes. Serra trailed, 3-2, before tying it in the fifth on a home run by Alain Girman, who finished with three hits. After Bishop McCort went ahead with a run in the sixth, Serra scored two in the bottom of the sixth. Girman hit a sacrifice fly to bring home the go-ahead run.

First published on June 9, 2009 at 12:00 am