Pine-Richland wins another title
Okuda stymies NA for 3rd time this year
North Allegheny did it again. Scored an earned run off Ryan Okuda for the second time this season. Actually, North Allegheny scored two, which is big news because no other team has scored an earned run off Pine-Richland’s star pitcher.
But beating Okuda? Huh. Everyone has swung and missed at that, and North Allegheny reached strike three Thursday night.
Okuda has beaten North Allegheny three times this season, but this win certainly meant the most as Pine-Richland defeated North Allegheny, 3-2, to win the WPIAL 6A championship at Wild Things Park in Washington, Pa. It was Pine-Richland’s fifth since 2004.
The win lifted Okuda’s perfect record to 8-0. A senior left-hander and a Virginia Tech recruit, Okuda pitched a five-hitter and struck out eight. The two earned runs shot his season total all the way to three. North Allegheny scored the other in an earlier 7-1 loss.
“I thought this was the best we’ve seen him throw in the three times we faced him this year,” said Andrew Heck, North Allegheny’s first-year coach.
As usual, Okuda relied heavily on his fastball, but he also had his slider working well most of the game. North Allegheny (17-7) took a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning before Okuda settled in and did not allow a hit again until Jack Lehew’s solo homer with two outs in the seventh.
“What’s funny is everyone kept telling me all week how it’s hard to beat a team three times in a season,” said Pine-Richland coach Kurt Wolfe, who won his third title. “But I kept going back to our basketball team. They beat Butler four times this season. If we play our game, we can beat anybody.”
And Pine-Richland baseball has something in common with the school’s basketball team. They are both WPIAL champions, completing a rare double play that started
in March with the basketball team’s title. Three months later, Pine-Richland became only the fourth school in the history of the WPIAL to win basketball and baseball titles in the same school year. Pine-Richland basketball standouts Phil Jurkovec and Andrew Petcash watched the game from right behind the Rams’ dugout.
“I really believe success breeds success and, when these kids saw their buddies on other teams have success, saw gold medals around their necks, they kind of said, ‘Hey, we’re pretty good, too,’ ” said Wolfe.
Pine-Richland (18-4) tied the score in bottom of the fourth against North Allegheny starter Bobby Brown. Jacob Maggi hit a one-out double and scored on an infield grounder.
The Rams went ahead in the fifth when Craig Kunkel smacked a hanging curveball for a triple and scored on Joey Bolick’s double. Kunkel finished 2 for 3.
Pine-Richland took a 3-1 lead in the sixth on Jeremy Burnstein’s RBI single.
“If we didn’t respond right away with a run to tie in the fourth, who knows what might have happened?” said Wolfe. “That was huge to get that run back, and it kind of was the turning point of the game because Okuda started to settle in.”
Okuda said: “That tends to happen with me. If I can settle in, that’s usually when I’m the strongest, when I can figure out where to place the ball.”
But these teams could meet again in six days. If they both win PIAA firstround games Monday, they will play Thursday. Okuda would get the call. So, North Allegheny might get one more swing at him.
“He doesn’t blow you away,” said Heck, “but he keeps you off balance and the other thing he does, that a lot of fans might not notice, is he keeps the ball down.”