Cream of the Crop
Oley Valley rolls to district title with pounding of Palmyra
He stood in the infield at FirstEnergy Stadium, face and shirt splotched by a cream pie just administered by his Oley Valley baseball players.
Yet Rick Harrison still found a bright side to the embarrassing moment.
“At least it’s whipped cream,” Harrison said to the various media representatives who had been interviewing him following Thursday’s District 1 Class AA championship game. The spoils of victory. The only thing sweeter than the pie Harrison wore was the game’s outcome. Oley Valley had just finished ringing up a 6-0 victory on Lancaster Catholic, standing atop the district’s AA ranks for the first time since 2011.
The title finish also took sting out of the end to their 2015 season, when a semifinal-round loss prevented the Lynx from playing for the 3-AA trophy.
“I think we went out and competed well,” the OV head coach said. “Last year, we were one out short. I felt good about our chances this year ... the kids know how to fight.”
With Gavin Blankenbiller on the hill for Oley (19-4), the Crusaders (17-5) didn’t stand a fighting chance. The Lynx’ sophomore southpaw twirled a masterful one-strikeout shutout, yielding just four hits and one walk for seven innings.
The OV defense backed Blankenbiller with solid play, putting LC away 1-2-3 in three at-bats. A 2-3-5 double play in the fifth thwarted LC’s best scoring bid at third base — the furthest any of the Crusaders’ five baserunners were able to go.
“With our defense,” Blankenbiller said, “I knew they would take care of any ground balls.”
And while Blankenbiller got a second-hand taste of the pie delivered unceremoniously by the players — his face and shirt sported some of the cream — the other OV players fed off his pitching. They built a 3-0 lead through five innings, during which the Crusaders were held to a pair of hits, before doubling their lead in the sixth with help from RBI plays by Gray Williamson (double), Matt Fisher (bunt) and Pete Vaccaro (triple).
“He did a great job,” Tyler Wentzel said of Blankenbiller, who needed approximately 80 pitches to dispatch Lancaster Catholic. “You couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
“He’s thrown good games against AAA teams,” Harrison added. “I felt confident he could throw strikes if he was pounding it around their knees.”
One down note for the Lynx was the number of runners left on base: Seven through the first three innings, eight for the game. That included a bags-full situation in the third, when Oley succeeded in chasing Crusader starter Shawn Henry (five hits, two runs, one walk, two hit batters) with two outs.
“I was a little concerned,” Harrison admitted. “I don’t want to leave a team hanging around. We have to continue to be aggressive.”
Offensively, Oley banged out 11 hits. Three of them went for extra bases — Vaccaro’s triple, and the doubles by Williamson and Wentzel.
“It was huge coming
back, getting here and winning,” Wentzel, who went 3-for-4 and scored two runs, said. “It motivated all of us.”
The Lynx converted three of their first four hits into a second-inning run. Blankenbiller, Brandt Schlegel and Gavin Troutman hit successive singles, with Clark Williamson (Blankenbiller’s courtesy runner) scoring off a Gray Williamson fielder’s choice.
They struck again in the third, Wentzel (double) coming around off Vaccaro’s grounder to shortstop and designated hitter Nate Christman’s RBI single. Oley then went up 3-0 in the fifth off singles by Vaccaro (2-for-3) and Daymond Zweizig.
“Our guys have been working extra hard on the fundamentals,” Harrison said.
The district title was also the sixth for Oley Valley in the baseball program’s history.
“It felt great,” Blankenbiller said. “Not just for the community, but for the team.”
NOTES >> Oley’s district championship finish was particularly notable in light of its roster demographic: Only four seniors among its 20 players. “Even at the end, we had a freshman (Troutman) and other younger guys,” Harrison said . ... Lancaster used three pitchers against the Lynx. Andrew DeBord was charged with three runs in 3-2/3 innings of relief for Henry, and Nicholas Breznak yielded OV’s last run in 2/3 inning.