Spurt in fourth inning lifts Blackhawk to title

South Park wasted good scoring opportunities in the first few innings. Blackhawk had only one good opportunity — and ran with it to a WPIAL title.

Blackhawk scored all of its runs in one inning and defeated South Park, 3-0, to win the WPIAL Class 4A championship Wednesday night at Wild Things Park in Washington. The win gave Blackhawk its third title under coach Bob Amalia and maybe wiped away some of the sting of losing in the final in two of the past three years.

Blackhawk had only four hits to six for South Park. But Blackhawk (21-2) used one good inning to surge past the Eagles (20-3). Blackhawk was hitless in the first three innings against pitcher Kyle Thompson. The rain started to fall in the bottom of the fourth and that’s when Blackhawk had an offensive outburst. Three of the Cougars’ four hits in the game came in the fourth.

“When you get this far, pitching and defense wins, and that’s what we had,” Amalia said.

Along with that one good inning offensively. After singles by Nick Cerani and Mike Turconi, Blackhawk’s Mark Engel hit a sacrifice bunt to put runners at second and third. Jimmy Nixon hit a grounder to South Park first baseman Mike Kentzel, but his throw home was wild, allowing the first run to score. Anthony Sebastian followed with a tworun triple to make it 3-0.

That’s all Blackhawk’s pitchers needed. Jon Pence pitched the first five innings, Andy McClymonds the sixth and Mike Turconi the seventh. South Park wasted good scoring opportunities in three of the first four innings against Pence. In the first, the Eagles had runners on second and third with one out, but didn’t score. They had the bases loaded with one out in the second before Pence got a double play. In the fourth, South Park got runners to second and third with one out, but Pence got a groundout and a strikeout to get out of another jam.